"Aurora borealis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... weather, and any other meteorological phenomena. That I should not neglect any opportunity of observing and noting down the dip and variation of the magnetic needle, and the intensity of the magnetic force; and should take particular notice whether any, and what kind or degree of, influence the Aurora Borealis might appear to exert on the magnetic needle; and to notice whether that phenomenon were attended with any noise; and to make any other observations that might be likely to tend to the further development of its cause, and the laws by ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... the robes of nobles and kings. The spoils of the wolf, bear, and buffalo, worked to the softness of cloth by the hands of Indian women, were stored for winter wear and to fill the sledges with warmth and comfort when the northwest wind freezes the snow to fine dust and the aurora borealis moves in stately possession, like an army of spear-men, across the northern sky. The harvests of the colonists, the corn, the wool, the flax; the timber, enough to build whole navies, and mighty pines fit to mast the tallest admiral, were stored upon the wharves and in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... 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 approach ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... of the Fury—And on the Natural History, &c., of the Coast of North Somerset—Arrive at Neill’s Harbour—Death of John Page—Leave Neill’s Harbour—Recross the Ice in Baffin’s Bay—Heavy Gales—Aurora Borealis—Temperature of the ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... popular, particularly as he made no charge for them. He seems to have been something of a homoeopathist, for he recommends sulphur to cure infectious diseases "brought on by the sulphurous vapours of the Aurora Borealis"! ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... 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
... then a person called Parker externalized a violin and gave the Laocoon in terms of sound. To me his rendering of marble resembled terra-cotta until I learned that the copy of the statue here is awfully weatherstained. After this three pretty girls gave the Aurora Borealis by telepathic suggestion rather well, and then I sang "Love Lives ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... the dim reflection of a nobler body of light. No; the illuminating power of this light, its trembling diffusiveness, its bright, clear whiteness, and its low temperature, showed that it must be of electric origin. It was like an aurora borealis, a continuous cosmical phenomenon, filling a cavern of sufficient ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... night, I saw another snow storm was coming. The zig-zag lightnings began to flare and flash, and sheet after sheet of wild flames seemed to burst right over our heads and were hissing around us. The very elements seemed to be one aurora borealis with continued lightning. Streak after streak of lightning seemed to be piercing each the other, the one from the north and the other from the south. The white clouds would roll up, looking like huge snow balls, encircled ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... 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 cashed in to the merry air of a hundred thousand, and with the cakes ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... which the Southern Indians have of the Aurora Borealis is very pleasing and romantic. They believe it to be the spirit of their departed friends dancing in the clouds, and when the Aurora Borealis is remarkably bright, at which time it varies most in colour, form, and situation, they say their friends are ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... (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 sight ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... satisfaction, at least—the many freak phenomena: a solitary light spirally ascending upward until lost in the clouds; sprays of fire and spark-showers illumining the sky; rainbow arcs of angry red that flickered, as an aurora borealis, from horizon ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... his 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 terrible night, and the very corn which was ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... gold-mines, where they work from four o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night—where night and day are all the same to the poor victims—those on the surface of the earth understand that when the sun goes down darkness follows, save when the Aurora Borealis comes with its weird light to illuminate ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... 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 ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... 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 ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... believed in spirits and monsters whom they must appease with gifts and incantations. They thought that after death the soul either goes below the earth to a place always warm and comfortable, or that it is taken up into the cold forbidding brightness of the polar sky. When the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, streamed across the heavens, the Eskimos thought it the gleam of the souls of the dead visible ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... a 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 ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... guns, but the Esquimaux were determined to have the last word, and went on firing after the cannon had ceased to roar. It was a calm night without moon, but the brilliant display of numberless stars, and a glorious Aurora Borealis, increased the enjoyment. The brethren, Stock and Haller, coming on board, we could not quit the deck till midnight; sleep was not thought of. Captain Martin also displayed a number of blue lights, to the great astonishment ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... of Northern Europe, the midnight sun, the flashing rays of the aurora borealis, the ocean continually lashing itself into fury against the great cliffs and icebergs of the Arctic Circle, could not but impress the people as vividly as the almost miraculous vegetation, the perpetual light, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... 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 ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... the infectious character of superstition occurs in a Scottish book, and there can be little doubt that it refers, in its first origin, to some uncommon appearance of the aurora borealis, or the northern lights, which do not appear to have been seen in Scotland so frequently as to be accounted a common and familiar atmospherical phenomenon, until the beginning of the eighteenth century. The passage ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 night; and it's all settled; and we're going to be ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... passed the islands of Timor, Timor-lavet, Rotte, and Seman. While they were near the two latter islands, they observed, about ten o'clock at night, on the 16th of the month, a phenomenon in the heavens, which in many particulars resembled the Aurora Borealis, though in others it was very different. It consisted of a dull reddish light, which reached about twenty degrees above the horizon; and though its extent, at times, varied much, it never comprehended less than ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... her permanence almost as wonderful as the contrary explosions! I wish—I wish we may not be actually flippancying ourselves into an embroil with that Ursa-major of the North Pole. What a vixen little island are we, if we fight wit the Aurora Borealis and Tippo Saib at the end of Asia at the same time! You, damsels, will be like the end of the conundrum, "You've seen the man who saw the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... and 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
... nor cottage: I should have quailed in the absence of moonlight, for it was by the leading of stars only I traced the dim path; I should have quailed still more in the unwonted presence of that which to-night shone in the north, a moving mystery— the Aurora Borealis. But this solemn stranger influenced me otherwise than through my fears. Some new power it seemed to bring. I drew in energy with the keen, low breeze that blew on its path. A bold thought was sent to my mind; my mind was made ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... 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 made by a cluster of the shooting-stars ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... innocence and virtue in the person of Calas, that it would have been cruel and unjust to separate a student from his books."[80] "Ah, madam," replies the most graceful of all courtiers, "let your imperial majesty forgive me; no, you are not the aurora borealis; you are assuredly the most brilliant star of the north, and never was there one so beneficent as you. Andromeda, Perseus, Callisto are not your equals. All these stars would have left Diderot to die of starvation. He was persecuted in his own country, and ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... had placed round the hut to catch foxes, 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
... Cousin and the "Gnats." The Aurora Borealis. A Bumble-bee Scrape. Another Bee Scrape. Justification by Faith Alone. Readiness to Fight. Love of ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... shores of Lake Superior away to the ultima Thule that lies beyond the waters of Athabasca and Slave Lakes, where the Aurora Borealis holds high carnival; from the beautiful prairies of the Bow and Saskatchewan Rivers to the muskegs and sterile regions of Hudson's Bay; from the fair and fertile domains of Red and Assinaboia Rivers, to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains, enduring footprints of James ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... o'clock in the morning. The duration of the shock was 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 ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... not see the sun from December to February. At some places it is invisible for a longer period, but at Hammerfest the streets, houses, and business places are lighted with electric lights, and similar plants are being introduced into other cities of the polar section. It is stated, also, that the aurora borealis is so brilliant night after night as to make it easy to read ordinary newspaper print without artificial light, and by long experience people are prepared for the peculiar conditions that exist there. The passengers on the steamers in these ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... toes like the inverted funnels of a Cunard steamer. His butternut coat had the abbreviated appearance of having been cut in deep water, and its collar encircled the back of his head like the belts of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. His vest resembled the aurora borealis, and his voice was a cross between a cane mill and the bray of an ass. Yet beautiful and bright he stood before the ruddy-faced swains and rose-cheeked lassies of the country, conscious of his charms, and proud of his great ability. He had prepared, after a long and tedious research ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... 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 stores of bitter ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... west by the 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 ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... is that women are wrongly educated. Instructed, trained, to consider matrimony the sole aim, the end of their existence, it matters not to whom the Gordian knot is tied, so that the trousseau, wedding, and eclat of bridehood follow. Soon the brightness of this false aurora borealis fades from the conjugal horizon; and the truths of life, divested of all romance, in bitterness and pain rise before them. Unfitted for duties which must be fulfilled, physically incapacitated for the responsibilities of life—mere school-girls in many instances—the ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... forth; but it made no difference to us. Crossing Spitzbergen, the car was frosted over with ice needles, which, however, were soon thawed by a warmer current of air. Between Iceland and the coast of Norway we glided through a magnificent aurora borealis that covered the whole sky with a luminous curtain, and made us fancy we had floated unawares into the fabulous Niffleheim of the old Scandinavian gods. Near the Faroe Islands we dashed into a violent thunderstorm, and were almost deafened by the terrific explosions, or blinded by the flashes ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... in a tone of great concern, and looking again at Andella, "I heard that you had been sick. I heard that you had an attack of Aurora Borealis, or something like that. And you don't look very well now. You must take good care of yourself, and if you don't feel well, you must ask your mother to bring you in to me and I will give you a dose of my medicine—my aqua saccharina. I know you always take ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... 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
... 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
... shoot at them," said Red Cloud; "we will destroy their power." And the Indians discharged their guns in quick succession towards the northern horizon, which was brilliantly illuminated with the Aurora Borealis; thus hoping to ward off ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... 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 would be no living in those ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... 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 helps ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... traveled round 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 the zodiacal triangle, with its celestial light, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... through the interstices of some 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 ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... a great light in the west. Under more elevated latitudes, it might have been mistaken for an immense aurora borealis, for the sky appeared on fire. The doctor very attentively examined ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... 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
... 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 very strong, and its appearance beautiful. He could not perceive it had any particular direction; ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... saw, however, was little like the pale, cold rays of the aurora borealis. It was a fiery red, which, shining to some height in the air, was covered in by a ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... abstract, alien humanity, a man cannot feel any real attachment. With all his outward ardour, Rudin is cold as ice at the bottom of his heart. His is an enthusiasm which glows without warmth, like the aurora borealis of the Polar regions. A poor substitute for the bountiful sun. But what would have become of a God-forsaken land if the Arctic nights were deprived of that substitute? With all their weaknesses, Rudin and the men of his stamp—in ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... 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 how much longer the half Cree and Williams and ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... and Alan 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 light was indeed a pillar of fire ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... variations, which the photographic process of record renders so beautifully manifest. If such expectations be confirmed, and the influence of the atmosphere be found able to produce results like these, then we shall probably find a new relation between the aurora borealis and the magnetism of the earth, namely, a relation established, more or less, through the air itself in connection with the space above it; and even magnetic relations and variations, which are not as yet suspected, may ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... 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 ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... upon the grand array, when Aurora Borealis plays her antic freaks, fights her mimic battles, waves her flaming banner along the northern skies. We look out upon the blue expanse above, when the bright and beautiful stars, with their sparkling eyes, ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... book? Hawthorne does not say so, but only that the people so believed; and it is historical fact that she was executed as a witch. Was a red letter A actually seen in the midnight sky, or was it a freak of the aurora borealis? What did Chillingworth see on Dimmesdale's breast? The author will not tell us. But if it was the mark of the Scarlet Letter, may we not appeal to the phenomena of stigmatism: the print, for example, of the five wounds of Christ on the bodies of devotees? Hawthorne does not vouch ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... exhibited, which were taken on glass thus prepared in a very minute fraction of a second. Add to this, a plan for a double line of submarine railway from Calais to Dover; a statement from M. Gaietta, that the aurora borealis is nothing more than spontaneously inflamed carburet of hydrogen; and a report from a learned anatomist, on the use, instead of the knife in amputation, of a platinum wire heated red-hot by a battery—and you may ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... in this 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 having a tendency to form an irregular ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... 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 east and the west of north, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... of electric lights through colored shades a fair representation of the Aurora Borealis was made to ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... caldron. Then the wide expanse of the 'thaw' maintained a ruddy glow for a while, but shortly cooled and became black and level again. During a 'thaw' every dismembered cake was marked by a glittering white border which was superbly shaded inward by aurora borealis rays, which were a flaming yellow where they joined the white border, and from thence toward their points tapered into glowing crimson, then into a rich, pale carmine, and finally into a faint blush ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... 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 cutting-head. After that, there were only four men who could work, each in his own heavily shielded cabin. In spite of the shielding that covered the actual work, there was an awesome display of multicolored light; it was like being in the middle of an aurora borealis. What was going on where that tiny rotating beam of cosmic rays was grinding at the collapsium ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... look out of the window, she called to the others to come quickly to see the northern lights; for out of the north there had come a gorgeous illumination, filling the heavens with a marvellous radiance such as only the aurora borealis can give. ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... 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
... 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, and yet leave us so frequently ...
— 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
... 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 ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... exercised, and as 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 ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... night among the valleys, and on the rounded hill slopes a hard glaze that is not so much light as snail-slime from the moon. Once or twice perhaps in the winter the Northern Lights come out between the moon and the sun, so that to the two unearthly lights is added the leap and flare of the Aurora Borealis. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... Painter of 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 Captain Lyon, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... at 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. Cold as it was, windows were thrown up all around us ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... said my friend; "I would like to hear more about these men, and would be glad if you would tell me something of their history." And out there under the open sky of the North Country, with the stars sparkling above us and the Aurora Borealis dancing and swishing over our heads in a wonderful panorama of colour and movement, we talked long into the night about the men in scarlet and gold. Their whole story could not be told in a night, but the eager interest of the listener and the creation of a new pride in things ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... voice that made the valley ring: You devils! will you be quiet? The appeal was immediately answered by silence; but hearing them tuning up for a second concert, I threw some wood on the blazing fire and once more retired to my lair. For a few minutes I lay awake to admire a brilliant Aurora Borealis shooting out its streams of electric light. Then, turning over on my side, I never moved again ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... this subterranean region, 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 ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... into a drift for the night, only to find itself imprisoned by the freezing of the crust above. Even wood mice were difficult to obtain, though their runways branched everywhere deep down under the snow, which to them was a blessing. The nights were cold and still, lit by the great fan of the Aurora Borealis which pulsed upward to the zenith, glowing with its ever-changing colors—delicate green fading into violet and blue, flaming redly or dying away in ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... 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 we by chance to be caught between two icebergs of even ordinary size, not even the enormous ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... openings at the facades of the great tanks burst forth (in regular position) hundreds of fierce tufts of a peculiar blue (or green) flame, of a purity and intensity, like electric lights—illuminating not only the great buildings themselves, but far and near outside, like hues of the aurora borealis, only more vivid. (So that—remembering the Pot from the crystal furnace—my jaunt seem'd to give me new ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... growing in the most unbridled luxuriance. There is a fine sporting nine-hole golf-course on the shingle strand at Grogwalloe, where the test of niblick play is more severe than on any links save those of the Culbin Sands near Nairn. Among other attractive features are the brilliant displays of aurora borealis over the Bay, which have been arranged at considerable cost by the Corporation in conjunction ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... there, like a great fire that has half a mind to die out one minute and flares up the next? Doesn't it remind you of the night we got away from Carabobo, when Donna Isobel pointed out our way to us, with the moon coming up over the mountains as a guide? That isn't the moon. It's the aurora borealis. You can hear the wash of the Bay down there, and if you're keen you can catch the smell of icebergs. There's Fort Churchill—a rifle-shot beyond the ridge, asleep. There's nothing but Hudson's Bay Company's ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... sea suddenly resumed its usual hue, but behind us all the way to the horizon, the skies kept mirroring the whiteness of those waves and for a good while seemed imbued with the hazy glow of an aurora borealis. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... northwestern course. I dreamed last night that I saw a 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 United States Government. My family were near, all of them, and ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... them, unsubstantial.8 Some of these people, however, fixed the site of paradise in the sky, and regarded the aurora borealis as the playing of happy souls. So Coleridge ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... fair sunshiny day; a crowd of strangers drew near who had undertaken a pilgrimage to the grave of Homer. Among the strangers was a minstrel from the north, the home of the clouds and the brilliant lights of the aurora borealis. He plucked the rose and placed it in a book, and carried it away into a distant part of the world, his fatherland. The rose faded with grief, and lay between the leaves of the book, which he opened in his own home, saying, "Here is a rose ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the aurora borealis complexion," said the trooper, with a smile, that began to cause uneasiness to his companion. "But the lady was not the gentleman's daughter, only his medico-petticoat attendant; and the Harvey, whose name was ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... come into possession of this rare print? It is extremely interesting, although the whole is a mere fable. Such meteorous appearances are to be explained in this way—that they are the reflections of the Aurora Borealis, and it is highly probable they ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... tropics there is not the lengthy twilight of a temperate clime; nor the fearsome splendor of the Aurora Borealis with its million streamers of ghastly light shooting into the heavens in a fan-shaped flare of quivering color to lend mystery and enchantment to the long months of the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... miles from the city, and it was nine o'clock in the evening when the boys arrived there. The moon was shining brightly, and the Milky Way, with its myriad stars, looked like a luminous mist across the vault of the sky. The aurora borealis swept down from the north with white and pink radiations which flushed the dark blue sky for an instant, and vanished. The earth was white, as far as the eye could reach—splendidly, dazzlingly white. And out of the white radiance ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... 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 ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... pale and pure northern dawn. At first he thought it must be the rising moon, but no orb appeared; and as the brilliance deepened, intensified into colour, and shot towards the zenith, he knew it for the aurora borealis. Soon the stars were blinded out by the vivid sweeping flicker of its rays; hues bright and varied as the rainbow thrilled along the iridescent roadways to the central point above, and tongues ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... as they are, such my present tale is, A nondescript and ever-varying rhyme, A versified Aurora Borealis, Which flashes o'er a waste and icy clime. When we know what all are, we must bewail us, But ne'ertheless I hope it is no crime To laugh at all things—for I wish to know What, after all, are all things—but ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... sent frost in January 1564, and an aurora borealis in February, Knox tells us, and "the threatenings of the preachers were fearful," in face of ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... which speedily changed to a dazzling whiteness as they fell. It was a signal of distress from the beleaguered Fort to any relieving column which might be on its way. Then away to the north, as if to remind man of his littleness, the Aurora borealis sprang into life. A great arc or fan-like glory radiated from the throne of the great Ice-king, its living shafts of pearly, silvery and rosy light flashing with bewildering effect over one half of the great dome of the heavens, flooding ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... 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 radiance through ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... 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 ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... 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
... Arctic and Antarctic regions the nights are often made quite gorgeous by the Northern Lights or Aurora borealis, and the corresponding appearance in the Southern hemisphere. The Aurora borealis generally begins towards evening, and first appears as a faint glimmer in the north, like the approach of dawn. Gradually a curve of light spreads like an immense arch of yellowish-white hue, which gains rapidly ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... bloomed under the cliffs when the winter snows were gone, and the brilliant colors that 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 tired of following ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... still 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 ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 reflection ...
— ABC's of Science • Charles Oliver
... 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 flame effluvium ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... phenomenon being due to the fact that the sun, for some time after 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
... example, made of metal; likewise all running streams will evolve a current of electricity, which will circulate round them; and the air thus charged with electricity may be one of the causes of the Aurora Borealis. In the equatorial regions, on the contrary, upright wheels placed parallel to the equator will originate a voltaic circuit, and water-falls will naturally ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, p. 694.]]; but a common name which in many of our country parts this creature bears, the 'golden knob,' is prettier still. And indeed in our country dialects there is a wide poetical nomenclature which is well worthy of recognition; thus the shooting lights of the Aurora Borealis are in Lancashire 'the Merry Dancers'; clouds piled up in a particular fashion are in many parts of England styled 'Noah's Ark'; the puff-ball is 'the Devil's snuff-box'; the dragon-fly 'the Devil's darning-needle'; a large black beetle 'the Devil's coach-horse.' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... 26. This night, says the Diary, a very wonderful display of the Aurora borealis was witnessed. The sky was all over a bright red, with white streaks streaming up from the north. The sight was wonderfully grand. As to the cause of this sublimely beautiful phenomenon various opinions have been held, and various theories launched upon the waves of scientific ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... and changes, and loss, and disappointments, and hard work weigh you down, and you say, 'It would be blessed to pass hence'? Does it set you harder at work than anything else can do? Is it all utilised? Or if I might use such an illustration, is it like the electricity of the Aurora Borealis, that paints your winter sky with vanishing, useless splendours of crimson and blue? or have you got it harnessed to your tramcars, lighting your houses, driving sewing-machines, doing practical work in your ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... land, and we aim to be a broad and cosmopolitan people. Literature and free, willing genius are not hemmed in by State or national linos. They sprout up and blossom under tropical skies no less than beneath the frigid aurora borealis of the frozen North. We hail true merit just as heartily and uproariously on a throne as we would anywhere else. In fact, it is more deserving, if possible, for one who has never tried it little knows how difficult it is to sit on a hard throne all day and write well. We are to recognize ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... 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 and ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... the far North, to "The Land of the Long Night,"—a land 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
... work in consequence of the violent motion of his magnet. It was afterwards found from the photographic records at Greenwich and Stonyhurst that the magnetic "storm" observed in America had simultaneously been felt in England. A similar connection between sun-spots and the aurora borealis has also been noticed, this fact being a natural consequence of the well-known connection between the aurora and magnetic disturbances. On the other hand, it must be confessed that many striking magnetic storms have ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... luminous blue of the northern sky. The allied aeroplanes—they were mostly French—came pouring down like a fierce shower upon the middle of the Central European fleet. They looked exactly like a coarser sort of rain. There was a crackling sound—the first sound I heard—it reminded one of the Aurora Borealis, and I supposed it was an interchange of rifle shots. There were flashes like summer lightning; and then all the sky became a whirling confusion of battle that was still largely noiseless. Some of the Central European ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... 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 ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth |
