estoring trance of the night.
The light comes through your eyelids as you sleep, and a certain nervous
life of the body that should sleep too keeps awake and active. I soon
began to feel the wear and tear of perpetual daylight, in spite of its
novelty and the many advantages which it presents to the traveller.

At Bodo we were in sight of the Lofoden Islands, which filled up all
the northern and western horizon, rising like blue saw-teeth beyond the
broad expanse of the West Fjord, which separates them from the group of
the shore islands. The next morning, we threaded a perfect labyrinth of
rocks, after passing Groto, and headed across the fjord, for Balstad, on
West-Vaagoe, one of the outer isles. This passage is often very rough,
especially when the wind blows from the south-west, rolling the heavy
swells of the Atlantic into the open mouth of the fjord. We were very
much favoured by the weather, having a clear sky, with a light north
wind and smooth sea. The long line of jagged peaks, stretching from
Vaeroe in the south west to the giant ridges of Hindoe in the north east,
united themselves in the distance with the Alpine chain of the mainland
behind us, forming an amphitheatre of sharp, snowy summits, which
embraced five-sixths of the entire circle of the horizon, and would have
certainly numbered not less than two hundred. Von Buch compares the
Lofodens to the jaws of a shark, and most travellers since his time have
resuscitated the comparison, but I did not find it so remarkably
applicable. There are shark tooth peaks here and there, it is true, but
the peculiar conformation of Norway--extensive plateaus, forming the
summit-level of the mountains--extends also to these islands, whose only
valleys are those which open to the sea, and whose interiors are
uninhabitable snowy tracts, mostly above the line of vegetation.

On approaching the islands, we had a fair view of the last outposts of
the group--the solid barriers against which the utmost fury of the
Atlantic dashes in vain. This side of Vaeroe lay the large island of
Moskoe, between which and a large solitary rock in the middle of the
strait dividing them, is the locality of the renowned Maelstrom--now,
alas! almost as mythical as the kraaken or great sea snake of the
Norwegian fjords. It is a great pity that the geographical illusions of
our boyish days cannot retrain. You learn that the noise of Niagara can
be heard 120 miles off, and that "some Indians, in t