Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/267

Rh Among the Indians who came in about the close of the month, was a family, the youngest member of which, a boy scarcely two years old, and still unweaned, walked on snow-shoes! I had the curiosity to measure them, and found their dimensions exactly two feet in length, including the curved point, by six inches at the broadest part. The little urchin was so fond of these painful appendages, that he hugged them as a plaything, and bawled lustily when his mother attempted to take them from him.

Now that the constant daylight renders the aurora borealis no longer visible, I shall make one or two general remarks regarding it. Its most common appearance at Fort Confidence is an arch with little motion, passing through the zenith, and spanning the heavens from north-west to south-east. Now, since the variation of the compass is here little more than four points easterly, it follows that there is a tendency in this remarkable phenomenon to dispose itself at right angles to the magnetic meridian. In the depth of winter, thin white clouds, seen during the short imperfect daylight, in many instances proved to be the aurora, which also not unfrequently appeared through a hazy sky. Its displays were seldom very brilliant, and it hardly ever exhibited those vivid prismatic tints which