us at
last. The illumination of the shores was unearthly in its glory, and the
wonderful effects of the orange sunlight, playing upon the dark hues of
the island cliffs, can neither be told nor painted. The sun hung low
between Fugloe, rising like a double dome from the sea, and the tall
mountains of Arnoe, both of which islands resembled immense masses of
transparent purple glass, gradually melting into crimson fire at their
bases. The glassy, leaden-coloured sea was powdered with a golden bloom,
and the tremendous precipices at the mouth of the Lyngen Fjord, behind
us, were steeped in a dark red, mellow flush, and touched with
pencillings of pure, rose-coloured light, until their naked ribs seemed
to be clothed in imperial velvet. As we turned into the Fjord and ran
southward along their bases, a waterfall, struck by the sun, fell in
fiery orange foam down the red walls, and the blue ice-pillars of a
beautiful glacier filled up the ravine beyond it. We were all on deck,
and all faces, excited by the divine splendour of the scene, and tinged
by the same wonderful aureole, shone as if transfigured. In my whole
life I have never seen a spectacle so unearthly beautiful.

Our course brought the sun rapidly toward the ruby cliffs of Arnoe, and
it was evident that he would soon be hidden from sight. It was not yet
half-past eleven, and an enthusiastic passenger begged the captain to
stop the vessel until midnight. "Why," said the latter, "it is midnight
now, or very near it; you have Drontheim time, which is almost forty
minutes in arrears." True enough, the real time lacked but five minutes
of midnight, and those of us who had sharp eyes and strong imaginations
saw the sun make his last dip and rise a little, before he vanished in a
blaze of glory behind Arnoe. I turned away with my eyes full of dazzling
spheres of crimson and gold, which danced before me wherever I looked,
and it was a long time before they were blotted out by the semi-oblivion
of a daylight sleep.

The next morning found us at the entrance of the long Alten Fjord. Here
the gashed, hacked, split, scarred and shattered character of the
mountains ceases, and they suddenly assume a long, rolling outline, full
of bold features, but less wild and fantastic. On the southern side of
the fjord many of them are clothed with birch and fir to the height of a
thousand feet. The valleys here are cultivated to some extent, and
produce, in good seasons, tolerable crops