mperature keeps at about 22 deg. below
zero (-30 deg. C.) now; but it does not feel very cold, the air is so
still. We can see the aurora borealis in the daytime too. I saw a very
remarkable display of it about 3 this afternoon. On the southwestern
horizon lay the glow of the sun; in front of it light clouds were
swept together--like a cloud of dust rising above a distant troop
of riders. Then dark streamers of gauze seemed to stretch from the
dust-cloud up over the sky, as if it came from the sun, or perhaps
rather as if the sun were sucking it in to itself from the whole
sky. It was only in the southwest that these streamers were dark;
a little higher up, farther from the sun-glow, they grew white and
shining, like fine, glistening silver gauze. They spread over the vault
of heaven above us, and right away towards the north. They certainly
resembled aurora borealis; but perhaps they might be only light vapors
hovering high up in the sky and catching the sunlight? I stood long
looking at them. They were singularly still, but they were northern
lights, changing gradually in the southwest into dark cloud-streamers,
and ending in the dust-cloud over the sun. Hansen saw them too, later,
when it was dark. There was no doubt of their nature. His impression
was that the aurora borealis spread from the sun over the whole vault
of heaven like the stripes on the inner skin of an orange.

"Sunday, November 5th. A great race on the ice was advertised for
to-day. The course was measured, marked off, and decorated with
flags. The cook had prepared the prizes--cakes, numbered, and properly
graduated in size. The expectation was great; but it turned out that,
from excessive training during the few last days, the whole crew
were so stiff in the legs that they were not able to move. We got
our prizes all the same. One man was blindfolded, and he decided who
was to have each cake as it was pointed at. This just arrangement met
with general approbation, and we all thought it a pleasanter way of
getting the prizes than running half a mile for them.

"So it is Sunday once more. How the days drag past! I work, read,
think, and dream; strum a little on the organ; go for a walk on the
ice in the dark. Low on the horizon in the southwest there is the
flush of the sun--a dark fierce red, as if of blood aglow with all
life's smouldering longings--low and far-off, like the dreamland of
youth. Higher in the sky it melts into orange, and that into