"Aurora borealis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lake Athapaska) became so short that the sun at its greatest altitude only appeared for two or three hours a short distance above the horizon. But there were compensations. The brilliancy of the Aurora Borealis, even without the assistance of the moon and the stars, made some amends for that deficiency, for it was frequently so light all night that travellers could see to read a very small print (Samuel Hearne). The importance of these "Northern lights" must ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... equals a first-class field night of the mysterious aurora borealis. No other phenomenon of nature in magnitude of display, in varied brilliancy of colour, in bewildering rapidity of movement, in grandeur so celestial, in its very existence so unaccountable, is ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... first time he had spoken that evening, and not even the half Cree, or Williams, or the factor's son guessed how the blood was racing through his veins. Outside he stood with the pale, cold glow of the Aurora Borealis shining upon him, and the limitless wilderness, heavy in its burden of snow, reaching out into the ghost-gray fabric of the night. The Englishman's laugh followed him, boisterous and grossly thick, and Jan moved on,—wondering ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... the most dangerous components of the sea is the snowstorm. The snowstorm is above all things magnetic. The pole produces it as it produces the aurora borealis. It is in the fog of the one as in the light of the other; and in the flake of snow as in the streak of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... great black ball moving in the heavens, and it obscured the moon. The stars were in motion, visibly, and for a time afforded the only light. Then a brilliant halo illuminated the zenith like the quick-shooting irradiations of the aurora borealis. And men ran in different directions, uttering cries of agony. These cries, I remember distinctly, came from men. As I gazed upon the fading and dissolving moon, I thought of the war brought upon us, and the end of the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... luminosity we do not know. It hardly seems possible to believe that extremely thin gases exposed to the terrific cold of space can be so hot as to be luminous and can retain their heat and their luminosity indefinitely. A cold luminosity due to electrification, like that of the aurora borealis, would seem to ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... setting sun.' As he finished another American present requested that he be permitted to attempt an improvement on the toast given by his countryman, which request was granted. He then toasted the United States in this fashion: 'Here's to the United States, bounded on the north by the Aurora Borealis, on the east by infinite chaos, on the south by the procession of the Equinoxes, and on the west by the day of judgment.' This indeed is extravagant language, but that fellow possessed the American spirit which recognizes no limit to the possibilities ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... science, and he exchanged with Akin Hall Library a Young's Astronomy for a Newcomb's, in 1898. He accompanied the presentation of the later book, in which was the author's name inscribed with a note to Mr. Eagle, with a demonstration of a theory of the Aurora Borealis. ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... bookcase where he had left them. She seated herself on the arm of her father's chair. She was a charming and graceful figure, swinging the slender ankle that the Scorpions afterward described with imaginative fervour as "a psalm," "a fairy-tale," and "an aurora borealis." They none of them ever agreed as to the dress she wore that evening; but Eliza Thick, who was perhaps the most observant, declared that it looked like a chintz curtain. I think it must have had small sprigs of flowers printed ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... Refugee's Story Mr. Hanselpecker Burning of Miramichi The Lost One—a tale of the Early Settlers The Mignionette Song of the Irish Mourner A Winter's Evening Sketch The School-mistress's Dream Library in the Backwoods The Indian Summer The Lost Children—a Poem Sleigh Riding Aurora Borealis Getting into ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... shall not be! No more shall the Wolves slink among our campfires. The time is come.' A great streamer of fire, the aurora borealis, purple, green, and yellow, shot across the zenith, bridging horizon to horizon. With head thrown back and arms extended, he swayed to ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... in the chronicles of those who were blessed in being his contemporaries. One indiscreet remark of Josephus has been recognized as the interpolation of a later hand, well-intentioned perhaps, but misguided. Jesus glows in the Gospels. Yet they that awaited the day when, in a great aurora borealis, the Son of man should appear, had passed from earth before one of ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... we stood round our camp-fire, we were startled by a brief but striking display of the aurora borealis. My imagination had already been excited by talk of legends and of weird shapes and appearances, and when, on looking up toward the sky, I saw those pale, phantasmal waves of magnetic light chasing each other across the little opening above our heads, and at first sight seeming barely to clear the ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... the invitation, tossed it, together with a note from Dick, across to Barney without comment, the color of his entire world changed for that favorite son of Broadway. The surly gloom of the end of a profitless enterprise became magically an aurora borealis of superior hopes:—no, something infinitely more substantial than any heaven-painting flare of ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... the Valley Evil Influence Spoken of several Philosophers Nature a Moral Power To June Summer On a Midge Steadfast Provision First Sight of the Sea On the Source of the Arve Confidence Fate Unrest One with Nature My Two Geniuses Sudden Calm Thou Also The Aurora Borealis The Human Written on a Stormy Night Reverence waking Hope Born of Water To a Thunder-Cloud Sun and Moon Doubt heralding Vision Life or Death? Lost and Found The Moon Truth, not Form God in Growth In a Churchyard Power Death That Holy Thing From Novalis What Man is there of You? O Wind of God Shall ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... we henceforth put any trust in the Planets? Are they in league with deceitful soothsayers, astrologers, and fortune-tellers? I cannot further pursue the painful subject. We owe a debt of gratitude to the Times for exposing duplicity in the highest places. Imagine treachery in Aurora Borealis! What an awful flirt she would be!! How she'd "wink the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... blood could not be washed away. Deep and lasting were the horror and grief which were felt when the news of his death reached his home in the north. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood, it is said, saw the coming vengeance of heaven in the Aurora Borealis which appeared in unwonted brilliancy on the evening of the execution, and which is still known as "Lord Derwentwater's Light" in the northern counties; the rushing Devil's Water, too, they said, ran down with blood on that ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... manifested in the mountainous icebergs, and marvelous speculations are indulged in concerning the earth's center of gravity, the cradle of the tides, where the whales have their nurseries, where the magnetic needle goes mad, where the Aurora Borealis illumines the night, and where brave and courageous spirits of every generation dare to venture and explore, defying the ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... quest of animal food, I found monotonously destitute of everything I had experienced in former traveling, except fatigue. The wail of the winds, and the desolate landscape of ice and snow, never varied. The coruscations of the Aurora Borealis sometimes lighted up the dreary waste around us, and the myriad eyes of the firmament shone out with a brighter lustre, as twilight shrank before the gloom ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... a remarkable display of the aurora borealis in January, 1837, and this poem commemorates ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... An aurora borealis was seen from North End, Hampstead, near London, from about seven o'clock until eleven, on the evening of Dec. 1. It generally appeared as a light resembling twilight, but shifting about both to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... in Central New York, a latitude in which the Aurora Borealis is seldom seen with so much splendor. I remember another similar one seen from the city of New York in November, 1882. On this last occasion some observers saw a great upright beam of light which majestically ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... it has sunk below the horizon, continues to shine on the glistening ice of the glaciers and the snow of the mountain summits, thus producing a weird luminosity in the heavens, somewhat resembling the Aurora Borealis. ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... the poles of the earth in this imperishable vessel; he had seen the brilliant visitor of the long nights, the aurora borealis, mirror herself in the immense stalactites of eternal ice, rejoicing in the play of colors alternating with each other in the varying folds of her glowing scarf. He had visited the tropics, where ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... the Universe has not forgotten the embellishment of the Pole. One of the most beautiful phenomena in nature is the Aurora Borealis, or northern lights. It generally assumes the form of an arch, darting flashes of lilac, yellow, or white light towards the heights of heaven. Some travellers state that the aurora are accompanied by a crackling or hissing noise; but ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... do not know of any reason why there should not be as many foolish virgins in the future state as in this. As I am a believer in the Bible and Christianity, I don't need these things as confirmations, and they are not likely to be a religion to me. I regard them simply as I do the phenomena of the Aurora Borealis, or Darwin's studies on natural selection, as curious studies into nature. Besides, I think some day we shall find a law by which all these facts will fall ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... which I assure you were considered quite a dainty by us poor wretches, greedy as we were after fresh meat. On the 4th of November, the sun was no longer visible, and a long and dreary night set in. All the light we had came from the moon, aurora borealis, and the lamps which we hung around our hut, and fed with bear's fat. The only consolation left us was that with the sun the bears had left us, and we could now leave the hut without danger of being devoured. The cold still continued to increase ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... frequent showers of sleet and snow. But, in the night, we had fair weather, and a clear serene sky; and, between midnight and three o'clock in the morning, lights were seen in the heavens, similar to those in the northern hemisphere, known by the name of Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights; but I never heard of the Aurora Australia been seen before. The officer of the watch observed that it sometimes broke out in spiral rays, and in a circular form; then its light was ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... several hundred yards in diameter seemed one vivid welter of pulsing colors, with flashing lances of every hue crisscrossing in and through a great central cloud of ever-changing opalescence like a fiery aurora borealis gone mad. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... gave a variety of pleasing and extraordinary information to curious readers: Indians, "broods of French savages;" earthquakes, St. Helmo's fire, phosphorescence, aurora borealis, mermen and mermaids, sea-snakes, krakens, etc., were jostled ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... and wind, preceded by a most remarkable Aurora Borealis, and some delay at night at Rimouska, we reached Quebec, and got alongside at Point Levi, on the afternoon of Saturday, the 11th September; and I had great pleasure in meeting my old friend Mr. Hickson, who came down to meet Mrs. Hickson and ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... The aurora borealis or Northern lights is an electric current which flows from that world to earth, and is sent in through the great gate. The scintillations of these rays are caught up by the clouds and vapors and are repeated in many portions of the globe, and faint rays from them are seen ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... with the little camp fire on Flat Point and with Doctor Joe and the boys. With darkness the uncanny light of the Aurora Borealis flashed up in the north, its long, weird fingers of changing colours moving restlessly across the heavens. The forest and the wide, dark waters of Eskimo Bay ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... from its trembling and Rickering character, its clear dry whiteness, the very slight elevation of its temperature, its great superiority to that of the moon, was evidently electric; something in the nature of the aurora borealis, only that its phenomena were constant, and able to light up the whole of ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... under brake, thereby emitting great volumes of steam and smoke, which when illuminated with various colors produced a magnificent spectacle. Over three hundred scintillator effects were worked out and this feature of fireless fireworks was widely varied. The aurora borealis and other effects created by this battery of search-lights extended for many miles. The many effects regularly available were augmented on special occasions and it is safe to state that this apparatus built upon a huge scale provided ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... venture, even in the most hypothetical form, to ask whether the Aurora Borealis and Australia may not be the discharge of electricity, thus urged towards the poles of the earth, from whence it is endeavouring to return by natural and appointed means above the earth to the equatorial regions. The non-occurrence of it in very high latitudes is not at all against ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... clever arrangement of electric lights through colored shades a fair representation of the Aurora Borealis was made to ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... where during a part of the year the sun is not seen, for it does not rise above the horizon, and in some parts of the country does not show itself for sixty-seven days, during which time the moon, stars, and the aurora borealis take ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... and a voice with a gurgle in it, like a dove's. A nervous, convulsive moment of her pursed-up little mouth made that organ an uncertain element in her physiognomy, shifting as it did from one side of her face to the other with the rapidity of an aurora borealis. "Don't mind them, dear. A woman can never do more than reflect 'broken lights' of her husband, when she has a good one. Don't you love that expression?—'broken lights'? 'We are but broken lights of Thee!' Dear Tennyson! And no word yet from ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... and these would be our clouds. From them he would see rain, hail and snow falling to the earth, and from time to time bright flashes would shoot across the air- ocean, which would be our lightning. Nay even the brilliant rainbow, the northern aurora borealis, and the falling stars, which seem to us so high up in space, would be seen by him near to our earth, and all within the ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... Men is a kind of parable representing a part of the purport of the following treatise. The Indians, making a hasty inference from a trivial phenomenon, arrived unawares at a probably correct conclusion, long unknown to civilised science. They connected the Aurora Borealis with electricity, supposing that multitudes of deer in the sky rubbed the sparks out of each other! Meanwhile, even in the last century, a puzzled populace spoke of the phenomenon as 'Lord Derwentwater's Lights.' The cosmic pomp and splendour ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Little Cousin and the "Gnats." The Aurora Borealis. A Bumble-bee Scrape. Another Bee Scrape. Justification by Faith Alone. Readiness to Fight. Love of Justice. ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... the pulsations are found to be simultaneous, they are real; if not simultaneous, they may depend on such conditions; but from the nature of the cause, we should look for them as much in the zodial light, as in the aurora borealis, regarding ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... imperfectly understood. Any overheated motor may of course "seize" without warning; but so many complaints have reached us of accidents similar to yours while shooting the Aurora that we are inclined to believe with Lavalle that the upper strata of the Aurora Borealis are practically one big electric "leak," and that the paralysis of your engines was due to complete magnetization of all metallic parts. Low-flying planes often "glue up" when near the Magnetic Pole, and there is no reason in science why the ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... lighted the sky and mountains and sea, when the sun set of evenings. He loved the mists, and the mighty storms that sent the sea rolling in upon the cliffs in summer. He never ceased to marvel at the aurora borealis, which by night flashed over the heavens in wondrous streams of fire and lighted the darkened world. His father told him the aurora borealis was the spirits of their departed people dancing in the sky. He learned the ways of the wild things in sea and on land and never ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... most singular sounds produced from a telephone in connection with a telegraph wire during the aurora borealis, and I have just heard of a curious phenomenon lately observed by Dr. Channing. In the city of Providence, Rhode Island, there is an over-house wire about one mile in extent with a telephone at either end. On one occasion the sound of music and singing was faintly audible in ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... returned, bade them resume their places, jumped on the sledge, and continued to advance. In half an hour the moon rose in a clear sky. The stars shone brightly, and to add to the beauty of the scene, the aurora borealis played and shot about vividly overhead, enabling them to resume ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... the electromagnetical constituents of the Aurora Borealis, and explain their relation ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... just in time to hear Ray Martin's remark; "speaking of forest fires, did any of you fellows see the Northern Lights last night up back of Haystack Mountain? Father and I thought first it was a forest fire. The sky was all pink and white. But we concluded it must have been the reflection of the Aurora Borealis. You can see 'em this time of year, you know. Snow ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... balloon of the astral sphere. Just as many physical suns and stars roam in space, so there are also countless astral solar and stellar systems. Their planets have astral suns and moons, more beautiful than the physical ones. The astral luminaries resemble the aurora borealis-the sunny astral aurora being more dazzling than the mild-rayed moon-aurora. The astral day and night are longer ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... are said to entertain the idea that the coruscations of the Aurora Borealis, are occasioned by the sports of the fishes in the ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... Charles! She looked so warm and so flushed—just like a torch, herself!—and so lovely, kind, and happy, in the midst of her living roses. Above, serenely shone myriads of pale stars in the clear sky; around the horizon, heat-lightning flashed. The moon was rising in the east; and in the north, the aurora borealis bloomed like a vast lily. It was really a rare scene. We returned to Mrs. Harry Sedgwick's. There she stood, receiving the greetings of the members of the party; every gentleman bearing a torch, which lighted up a rosy face at his side. Such ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... reach and drag back the whirling planets to the parent body. All about the mighty sphere, stretching far into space, a wan glow seemed to ebb and flow, a kaleidoscope of swiftly changing color. It was the zodiacal light, an aurora borealis on a scale inconceivable! ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... broom was only budding, and the last sea-mew had flown to its scaur, and the smouldering whins had leaped up into the first yellow flame of the bonfires, and the more shifting, fantastic, brilliant banners of the aurora borealis shot across the frosty sky, before the first faint shout announced that Staneholme and his lady had come home. With his wife behind him on his bay, with pistols at his saddle-bow, and "Jock" on "the long-tailed yad" at his back, with tenant retainers and veteran domestics ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... mending a hole in his coat that he had made while negotiating barbed wire, with a borrowed needle and thread in a lodging house, he had done no work at all. Neither had he worried about business nor about time and seasons. And for the first time in his life he had seen the Aurora Borealis. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... black cat on the back in a dark room and seen the sparks fly? Of course, and, sir, I know it's almost beyond belief, but, positive, they told George Watkins, my mate, up at the Huxley Institute, that them sparks and the aurora borealis that you see sometimes a-lighting up the heavens is one and the same thing! Wonderful, isn't it, sir, that Science should discover that a black cat is some kind of kin to the aurora borealis? But George says that's what they said, for the aurora borealis is caused by the earth a-rolling ...
— Frictional Electricity - From "The Saturday Evening Post." • Max Adeler
... back. Baard was beautiful—and awful. You know how glisteningly blond he was. Oliver, have you ever watched the polar bears? He was cold as iron when it is so cold that it burns you. Coldness wasn't negative with him. It was positive—and awful beyond expression—like the aurora borealis. ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... is that strange light which far to the north gleams on the blackened sky? It was not the lightning's flash, for it was a steady brightening glow. It was not the weird flash of the aurora borealis, but a redder and more lurid sheen; nor was it the harbinger of the rising sun which lit that northern sky. From a tinge it brightens to a gleam, and deepened at last into a broad glare. That lonely heart was overwhelmed with the dreadful truth. The prairie is on fire! Often had they talked of prairie ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... shake the dust, or the dirt, off our feet, and pursue our journey, well assured that a few milestones will bring us to a humaner roof. Incivility and surliness have occasionally given us opportunities of beholding rare celestial phenomena—meteors—falling and shooting stars—the Aurora Borealis, in her shifting splendours—haloes round the moon, variously bright as the rainbow—electrical arches forming themselves on the sky in a manner so wondrously beautiful, that we should be sorry to hear them accounted for by philosophers—one-half ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... turned their backs to the sunset, and drove along the bleak high-road toward Sedgehill, where the reflection of the blast-furnaces—that weird aurora borealis of the Black Country—was already beginning to pulsate against the darkening sky. And here again Elisabeth realized that for her the old things had passed away, and all things had become new. She felt that her childish dream was true, and that the crimson ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... rope. As I lay in bed of a morning I could see the shadows and reflected lights from these clothes moving on the ceiling as the clothes were blown about by the wind. The movement of these shadows and reflected lights was exactly that of the rays of an Aurora Borealis, minus colour. I can conceive no resemblance more perfect. They stalked across the ceiling with the same kind of ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... to those of the popes—harmless corruscations—a sort of aurora borealis, erratic and splendid, but very unreal and very unsearchable as ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... fortunate; there is no doubt about that," was the reply. "But you have not yet seen the midnight sun nor the aurora borealis, both of which sights far exceed in beauty what we have looked upon to- night. But it grows chilly and an insidious fog is gathering round us; we must take measures for passing the night in safety, for, were ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... firing into the midst of the pack as they did. With snarls of baffled rage the remainder of the fierce creatures withdrew to some distance, and, sitting down on their haunches, howled dismally, with their muzzles lifted in the air toward the flickering Aurora Borealis. The dogs howled back in answer, and then, after a few shots at long distance, the battle was ended. The wolves turned tail and trotted off ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... late one cold, clear night, watching the rising and setting of that sea star that kept me fascinated out in the chill air, I saw for the first time the sky illuminated with the aurora borealis. It was a magnificent display of the phenomenon, and I feel certain that my attention was first attracted to it by the crackling sound which appeared to accompany the motion of the pale flames as they streamed across the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... instrument. I will take it upon myself to elect Rebecca and ask no other reward than the privilege of dancing with her at the inaugural ball. She was my first, if not my only love; and although she threw me over for Pinkie Hill, by whose effulgent aurora borealis she was hypnotized, and took to wearing pantaloons in public despite my protest, she has since repented and given all her maidenly heart to me; hence it will be my duty and my pleasure to manage her campaign. Rebecca may safely consider herself elected and discount her ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... The Aurora Borealis is a group of boys playing football. Sometimes they use the skull of a walrus for the ball. The swaying movement of the lights shows that the players are struggling with each other and tugging back and forth. If the Aurora fades away and you utter a low whistle, the boys ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... with a woolen Mackinaw jacket on in place of the parkas[5] they had worn all day. Swiftly, almost on the instant they closed their eyes, they were asleep. The stars leaped and danced in the frosty air, and overhead the colored bars of the aurora borealis ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... Brighton there was one evening a brilliant aurora borealis. As I looked at it, I heard an Englishman say, to my great amazement, it was the first time he had ever seen one in his life! I once saw one in America of such extraordinary brilliancy and duration, that ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... make use of it without any breach of trust; and to those who have enlightened my darkness I am very grateful. The illumination, I know, is only partial; but I hope that its effect, in respect to the twilight of diplomacy, may be compared to that of the Aurora Borealis lights. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... of the different layers of ice; the investigation of the currents in the water under it, etc., etc. I had the main charge of this department. There remains to be mentioned the regular observation of the aurora borealis, which we had a splendid opportunity of studying. After I had gone on with it for some time, Blessing undertook this part of my duties; and when I left the ship I made over to him all the other observations that were under my charge. Not ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... good deal like reducing or trying to reduce the Aurora Borealis to 2 and 2 4, to go into the White House for four years, warm up to this cold, passionately talked about, passionately believed in Lady. It does not give any real satisfaction to anybody—either to the hundred million people or to ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... could buy, she began to hate it now. As they penetrated farther North, so the conditions grew more appalling. No longer the sun mounted the horizon. Night and day were much the same thing—a mysterious luminiferousness, merging into the fantastic lights of the great Aurora Borealis, that occasionally leapt across the Northern sky in spectrumatic beauty, to flicker ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... about the time of the Miller excitement, and also a very unusual illumination of sky and earth by the Aurora Borealis. This latter occurred in midwinter. The whole heavens were of a deep rose-color—almost crimson—reddest at the zenith, and paling as it radiated towards the horizon. The snow was fresh on the ground, and that, too, was of a brilliant red. ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... Mr. Bowley was going that very moment—would like nothing better than a walk—they went together, Clara and kind little Bowley—Bowley who had rooms in the Albany, Bowley who wrote letters to the "Times" in a jocular vein about foreign hotels and the Aurora Borealis—Bowley who liked young people and walked down Piccadilly with his right arm resting on the boss of ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the aurora borealis several times; also a splendid meteoric phenomenon that surpassed every thing I had ever seen or even heard of before. I was very much amused by overhearing a young lad giving a gentleman a description of the appearance ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... mountains. They heard the song of priests, and saw the dances of the savages to the sound of drums and pipes of bone. The pyramids of Egypt reaching to the clouds, with fallen columns, and Sphynxes half buried in sand, next sailed past them. Then came the Aurora Borealis blazing over the peaks of the north; they were fireworks which could not be imitated. The Prince was so happy, and he saw a hundred times more ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... valley the mysteries of that great science, physical geography. I was explaining to them the trend of the Rockies and the Himalayas, and of other mountains I should never see; I was telling them why it snowed, and unfolding the phenomena of the aurora borealis. Alexander with no more worlds to conquer was a sorry spectacle. We pedagogues who have mastered physical geography are Alexanders. But if I was bound to the pinnacle of learning so that I could neither fly nor fall, I could at least watch Tim as he struggled ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... about 45 seconds. It was attended with the usual rumbling noise, without thunder, the weather being very serene and pleasant. The appearances, however, usually indicating earthquakes, such as fiery meteors, the uncommon brilliancy of the aurora borealis, &c. had been ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... remarks, when the aurora borealis has faded out and I can see straight again, "if you're goin' to carom around that way in public, you ought to ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... resumed its usual colour; but behind us, even to the limits of the horizon, the sky reflected the whitened waves, and for a long time seemed impregnated with the vague glimmerings of an aurora borealis. ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... hypothesis to explain why the vegetable fossils of Baffin's Bay resemble the Equatorial plants. We suppose, in place of the sun, a great luminous source of heat which has now disappeared, and of which the Aurora Borealis is but perhaps ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... and came up the steps. "See here, Miss Armitage, come take your chair." He moved it around from the table and laid his hand on her arm, impelling her into the seat. "Now face it out. Those flashes of heat lightning are about as dangerous as the Aurora Borealis. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... killing a bear, entrapping foxes, or shooting grouse, the men continued to pass the winter months. To the officers, higher and more intellectual enjoyments were afforded by making observations, studying astronomy, and witnessing the brilliant appearance of the Aurora Borealis. ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... color as rapidly as an aurora borealis, and evidently much embarrassed; "I 'spect I mought as well own up, being's I've got cotched in my own trap; and besides, it won't make no great difference, only as I war intending it for a surprise. You see I axed Peggy the question last ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... night there's aurora borealis in the sky. You know this goes under ground all the way ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the 17th of February, between twelve and three o'clock, the crew witnessed a magnificent spectacle, then first seen by European eyes. It was an aurora borealis. "The officer of the watch," says the narrative, "noticed that from time to time rays left it in spiral and circular forms, and that then its brilliancy increased, which gave it an extremely beautiful appearance. It appeared ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... winter was the rare occurrence of the Aurora Borealis, and the extraordinary poorness of its display whenever it did make its appearance. It was almost invariably seen to the southward, between an E.S.E. and a W.S.W. bearing, generally low, the stationary patches of it ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... was this? Far to the North there showed a small, red ball of light. And it was not the Aurora Borealis! They were traveling fast. The ball of fire seemed to roll toward them along the earth at terrific speed, growing larger and more lurid. And now, beside it, wafting from it, like the tail to a comet, they could discern a swirling cloud, black ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... attached (if the term may be used) to certain midnight apparitions. The Aurora Borealis is always a pleasant companion; a meteor seems to come like a messenger from departed spirits; and the blossoming of trees in the moonlight becomes a ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... speaking precluded his flow of colloquial eloquence, it did not impede, or at all lessen, the force of that conciser quality, wit. Of satiric wit he possessed a very peculiar species. It was neither the dead-doing broadside of Dr. Johnson's satire, nor the aurora borealis of Gray ... whose arch yet coy and quiet fastidiousness of taste and feeling, as recorded by Mason, glanced bright and cold through his conversation, while it seemed difficult to define its nature; and while its effects were rather ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... they were gathered about the evening camp-fire in blissful relaxation, silently watching the aurora borealis work its wild wonders in the ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... clump of dark firs; and have observed him become suddenly silent, as, emerging from the moonlight woods, we looked into a rugged dell, and saw far beneath, the slim rippling streamlet gleaming in the light, like a narrow strip of the aurora borealis shot athwart a dark sky, when the steep rough sides of the ravine, on either hand, were enveloped in gloom. My friend's opportunities of general reading had not been equal to my own, but he was acquainted with at least one class of books of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... not to attain to true practical dignity by the borrowed lustre that eminent names, ancient and modern, may have lent to it, any more than the earth itself is warmed and made fruitful by the aurora borealis of an autumn night. Our system of public instruction, from the primary school to the college, rests mainly upon the public belief in its importance, its possibility, and its necessity. It is easy on a professional holiday to believe in the respectability ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... drew off one mitten, lighted a match, and glanced at the thermometer that hung beside the door. He remittened his naked hand hastily as if the frost had burned him. Overhead arched the flaming aurora borealis, while from all Dawson arose the mournful ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... Cambridge had found me making enquiries about them), and I corresponded with Messrs Gilbert about optical constructions, and with W. and S. Jones, Eastons, and others about pumps, hydraulic rams, &c. On Sept. 25th occurred a very magnificent Aurora Borealis. ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... 2. Aurora Borealis. The outer circle around the earth represents atmosphere. The sun current carries it far from the earth's surface. At the north, when the sun's reflection strikes the earth's crust in such a manner, its ...
— ABC's of Science • Charles Oliver
... The first Aurora Borealis I ever saw, the Northern or rather Northeast Sky appeared suffused by a dark blood-red colored vapour, without any variety of different colored rays. I have never since seen the like. This was about the year 1734. Northern lights ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... as alert as a fox, as tough as a caribou cutlet and as broad-gauged as the aurora borealis. He stood sprayed by a Niagara of sound—the crash of the elevated trains, clanging cars, pounding of rubberless tires and the antiphony of the cab and truck-drivers indulging in scarifying repartee. And so, with his gold dust ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... had been married in the autumn, and since then they had practically disappeared, surrounded by a glow of their own happiness. They had sunk below the horizon, but from the horizon there had, so to speak, come up a brilliant illumination like an aurora borealis. ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... our toils and resume our labours. Alter about an hour thus spent the watch was appointed, and each wrapped in his blanket. We vied unconvincing each other, with the nasal organ, which was in the soundest sleep; mine was the last watch, about an hour before daybreak. The Aurora Borealis rolled in awful splendour across the deep blue sky, but I will not tire my readers with a description. When the first glimpse of morn showed itself in the light clouds floating in the eastern horison, I awoke my companions; and by the time it was sufficiently light we had breakfasted, and ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad
... rash enough to try to tell something about him can no more pick and choose the incidents of his career that will make the most effective "stuff" than they could reduce the phenomena of a cyclone or the aurora borealis to a consistent ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... the most vivid lightnings are the result. Humboldt mentions in his "Cosmos" that, during an eruption of Kotlugja, one of the southern Icelandic volcanoes, the lightning from the cloud of volcanic vapor killed eleven horses and two men (Cosmos i. 223). Great displays of the aurora borealis usually accompany the volcanic eruptions of this island—doubtless resulting from the quantity of electricity imparted to the higher atmosphere by the condensation of the ascending vapors. On the 18th of August, 1783, while ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... phenomenon which is commonly called Aurora Borealis, is in high latitudes frequently seen ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... enough to raise a crop by. And he says "vegetation might have depended on the glare of volcanoes in the moon." What do you think would be the fate of agriculture depending on the "glare of volcanoes in the moon?" Then he says "the aurora borealis." Why, you couldn't raise cucumbers by the aurora borealis. And he says "liquid rivers of molten granite." I would like to have a farm on that stream. He guesses everything of the kind except lightning-bugs ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... and the days grew shorter and shorter as they advanced. But this did not much interfere with their travelling. The long nights of the Polar regions are not like those of more Southern latitudes. They are sometimes so clear, that one may read the smallest print. What with the coruscations of the aurora borealis, and the cheerful gleaming of the Northern constellations, one may travel without difficulty throughout the livelong night. I am sure, my young friend, you have made good use of your globes, and need not be told that the length of both nights and days, as you ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... that night was too young to shed much light. But just after Jean and Jake sleepily laid aside their pipes and closed their eyes, the aurora borealis flamed out icily in a clear sky, bringing more than all the light Bill needed. In that frozen stillness Bill's brain was like the interior of a lighted factory with all its machinery in full swing. Fed by hate and slowly accumulated ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... bad as that, I guess," said Raed. "I have it: it's the aurora borealis; nothing worse, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... yellow lure. They crisscrossed the land in every direction, threaded countless unmapped rivers in precarious birch-bark canoes, and with snowshoes and dogs broke trail through thousands of miles of silent white, where man had never been. They struggled on, under the aurora borealis or the midnight sun, through temperatures that ranged from one hundred degrees above zero to eighty degrees below, living, in the grim humour of the land, on "rabbit tracks ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... and startling beauty that night. A broad, fluctuating, semicircular arch of vivid white light spanned the northern quarter of the heavens, reaching from the horizon to the star Eta in the Greater Bear. It was the Aurora Borealis, just risen up for the winter season out of the freezing seas of the north, where every autumn vapour ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... and the more so, because the nation had no hope even from his death, since it was sure to hand them over to the tender mercies of his brother, who had all his faults, and some, in addition, of his own, without any of his merits. There was but one hope, and that turned out a mere aurora borealis, connected with the Duke of Monmouth, who, through his extraction by a bend sinister from Charles, as well as through his popular manners, Protestant principles, and gracious exterior, had become such a favourite with the people, that strong efforts were made to exclude the Duke of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... received me in the most amiable manner, and sent me an excellent "stall" for the opera performance. I was capitally seated and heard excellently. This Swede is indeed an original from top to toe! She does not show herself in the ordinary light, but in the magic rays of an aurora borealis. Her singing is infallibly pure and sure; but what I admired most was her piano, which ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... with the salt of the sea and redolent of the romance of strange people and distant lands. In listening, one becomes almost dizzy at the rapidity with which the scene and personnel change. The icebergs and the aurora borealis of the Arctic give place to the torrid waters and the Southern Cross of the South Pacific. A volcanic island, an Arabian desert, a tropical jungle, and the breadth and width of the ocean serve as the theatre, while a Fiji Islander, an Eskimo, and a turbaned Arab are actors in a half-hour's ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... irrelevant manner which he aimed at. This book is admirably composed, if we can bring ourselves to admit that the genre is ever admirable. The writer's vocabulary has become opulent, his phrases flash and detonate, each page is full of unconnected sparks and electrical discharges. A sort of aurora borealis of wit streams and rustles across the dusky surface, amusing to the reader, but discontinuous, and insufficient to illuminate the matter in hand. It is extraordinary that a man can make so many picturesque, striking, and apparently apposite remarks, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... Science there are upwards of 60 New Facts. Among these is a valuable paper on Arsenic, by Dr. Christison, (from the Philosophical Magazine;) a method of ascertaining the vegeto-alkali in Bark; the influence of the Aurora Borealis on the Magnetic Needle; Lieut. Drummond's Plan for illuminating Light Houses by a ball of lime, (from the Philosophical Transactions); Laws of electrical accumulation, and the decomposition of water by atmospheric and ordinary electricity; the new Indigo; the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... seen to little purpose. Lowered also in their apparent value by the prejudice, that what passes in parliament is but the harmless skirmishing of partisanship, dazzling the eye, but innocuous as the aurora borealis, demonstrations only too certain of coming evils receive but little attention in their earlier stages. Yet undoubtedly, if the laws applicable to conspiracy can in any way be evaded, we may see by the extensive cabal now organizing itself in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... sounds? I have me antherums aboot it! I tell ye that when they got here they'd be jommlin' and jostlin' one another that way that it 'ud be like a fight up on the ice in the old days, when we'd be at one another from daylight to dark, an' tryin' to tie up our cuts by the aurora borealis." This was evidently local pleasantry, for the old man cackled over it, and his cronies joined ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... perfectly well," answered the boatswain promptly. "If the stars and moon happened not to be shining, there was always the aurora borealis blazing up, like a great fire, right ahead of me. You have seen the northern lights on a winter's night, but they are a very different affair up there to what they appear so far south. If it wasn't for them, in my opinion, there ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... end of September and the first week in October had been stormy and even cold. The rainy season, however, was now over. The nights were often illuminated by the aurora borealis, which might be seen forming an arch of soft and lovely brightness over the lake to the north and north-eastern portions of the horizon, or shooting upwards, in ever-varying shafts of greenish light, now hiding, now revealing the stars, which shone with softened ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... Middle West, and east of New Italy, New Arabia. These states are New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. These are the states which carry the Rocky Mountains north toward the Aurora Borealis, and south toward the tropics. Here individualism, Andrew Jacksonism, will forever prevail, and American standardization can never prevail. In cabins that cannot be reached by automobile and deserts that cannot be crossed by boulevards, the John the Baptists, the hermits ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... strata that float upon the common air. The phenomena which accompany igneous meteors induce me to believe, that there exists in the upper parts of our atmosphere a stratum of inflammable fluid in contact with those strata of air which produce the phenomena of the aurora borealis and other fiery meteors.—I mean hereafter to pursue this subject in a ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier |
