The Massachusetts spy, and Worcester County advertiser. [volume] ([Worcester, Mass.]) 1825-1831, 1827-10-03
From the Salem Register.


AURORA BoREALIs. On Tuesday eve
ming we were again amused with the fantas-
tic sportings of the Northern Lights. They
began to show themselves as soon as day
light faded away, and continued with va
rious brilliancy till eleven. In the north
west they assumed the appearance of a.
broad expanse of bronzed light, from which
occasionally assembled to the zenith, faint
streams of silvery light. From the east
and west parts of the heavens, a multitude
of corruscations kept continual shooting
up, so as to cross at the zenith, where was
formed directly round the bright star in
the neck of the Swan, a more permanent
cloudy light. About eight O'Clock, the cor
ruscations had extended themselves nearly
round the horizon, and the whole hemis
phere was covered with dome of light,
faint however, and continually changing,
frightening at times, and then evanescent.
We cannot describe it better than in the
language of Thompson
colt in this season, silent from the north
A blaze of meteors shoot ensweeping first
The lower sky, they all at once converge
High to the crOtoa of heaven, and ali at once
Relapsing quick, as quickly reascend,
And mix, thwart, extinguish, and renew,
All ether coursing in maze of light"
We have seen great many theories to
account for these appearances, but all of
them quite unsatisfactory. The luminous
arch which appeared on the 2Sth ult. has
called forth the descriptive powers of many
writers, and what with facts, theories, and
conIectures, all mingled, and involved in
such mystery and confusion, that it is as
difficult to understand them, as to describe
the ever varying forms of the capricious
and whimsical appearances themselves.
One imagines it to be the reflection of the
light from the polar ice another conlec-
lures that it proceeds from the formation of
icy spiculR in the uppermost region of the
atmosphere; Franklin, thought it might be
caused by the electric fluid flowing in from
the polar regions towards the equator
another guesses it proceeds from the light
of the moon reflected from vapor, &c. In
deed, we have some score of these theories
at hand, but they are not worth repetition
The old song of the old woman tossed in q
blanket, answers just as well:
There was an old woman tost up in a blanket
Seventeen times as high as the moon;
For what she was there, nobody could tell
For under her arm she carried a broom.
Old woman, old woman, old woman, says /
y whittier, y whittier, = whittier SO high!
ITO sweep the cobwebs from the sky"
!, And this last line is pretty good de
scription of what we saw on Tuesday eve
ming. The whole hemisphere was streak
ed and striated, and notified, and brindled
and crystalized, and curdled; like a sand
ed floor, which had been swept over by
young house maid, whose head was as full
of airy nothingness and whimsical fantasy
as youth and love could make her.
This must be the same kind of appear
ance which Owen Glendower aliudes to
when he says, that at his birth,
"The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes
Of burning cressets :"
1t foreboded much to him, but what tina
which we saw forbodes, we know not, I'm
less it indicates the glorious displays of on
approaching militia musters.