Page:The ocean and its wonders.djvu/180

 the moon frequently shines there with great brilliancy in winter. Dr. Kane says that in October the moon had reached her greatest northern declination: "She is a glorious object. Sweeping around the heavens, at the lowest part of her curve she is still 14º above the horizon. For eight days she has been making her circuit with nearly unvarying brightness. It is one of those sparkling nights that bring back the memory of sleigh-bells and songs and glad communings [sic] of hearts in lands that are far away."

But despite all the varied and transient beauties of the northern skies in winter, the long arctic night is undoubtedly depressing in the extreme. In these regions men speak of being able to read the thermometer on the 7th of November at noon-day "without a light," as being matter for gratulation. The darkness still before them at that time would be of about three months' duration, and even then they would only get back to a species of twilight.

The cold experienced by these navigators of the northern seas is terribly intense. Their thermometers have frequently indicated a temperature as low as 75º below zero, or 107 degrees of frost, on Fahrenheit’s scale. The thermometers of arctic explorers are always filled with spirits of wine, as quicksilver freezes at about 40º below zero, and is therefore unsuitable. It would be frozen, indeed, the greater part of the winter.

Dr. Kane says: "At such temperatures chloric ether became solid, and carefully prepared chloroform