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Chap. X.]
AURORA AUSTRALIS.
313
1841
cated by the thermometer at that depth, 40.5°, nearly one degree higher than the mean temperature of the ocean, may have been occasioned by a sudden jerk in hauling it up; the thermometer was, as usual, compared with the standard before and after the experiment, and found to have a small unvarying correction. At 450 fathoms, the temperature was 39.5°: at 300 fathoms, 38°: at 150 fathoms, 37°: at the surface, 35°: several icebergs were in sight at the time, but none within five or six miles.
The Aurora again afforded us considerable light at night, in the absence of the moon, but did not break through the clouds which obscured the sky, and from which very fine snow was constantly falling until nearly 8 p.m., when it appeared from E.N.E. to N.W. of a yellow colour, forming an arch twenty degrees high, and at times exhibiting vivid flashes of a bright pink colour: it dispersed in a quarter of an hour. We continued to make good progress to the north-west during the two following days. In the evening of the 27th we March 27.witnessed a most brilliant exhibition of Aurora Australis, which I shall here insert in detail from the copious notes made at the time by myself and the officers, only first remarking that the constant but light snow of the morning was turned into small rain by the temperature rising at 11 a.m. to 36°: the rain ceased at 7 p.m., after a calm of two hours, and a breeze from the S.W. that followed partially cleared the sky. "At 7 50 p.m. bright coruscations of the Aurora appeared in the west;