Strange and confused noises are heard amidst this obscurity.

They sound like the flight of large night--birds--now flapping
now-heavily skimming over the steppes-now descending.

But no cry is heard.

This silent terror heralds the approach of one of those imposing
phenomena that awe alike the most ferocious and the most harmless, of
animated beings. An Aurora Borealis (magnificent sight!) common in the
polar regions, suddenly beams forth.

A half circle of dazzling whiteness becomes visible in the horizon.
Immense columns of light stream forth from this dazzling centre, rising
to a great height, illuminating earth, sea, and sky. Then a brilliant
reflection, like the blaze of a conflagration, steals over the snow of
the desert, purples the summits of the mountains of ice, and imparts a
dark red hue to the black rocks of both continents.

After attaining this magnificent brilliancy, the Northern Lights fade
away gradually, and their vivid glow is lost in a luminous fog.

Just then, by a wondrous mirage an effect very common in high latitudes,
the American Coast, though separated from Siberia by a broad arm of the
sea, loomed so close that a bridge might seemingly be thrown from one
world to other.

Then human forms appeared in the transparent azure haze overspreading
both forelands.