of potatoes, barley, and
buckwheat. This is above lat. 70 deg., or parallel with the northern part of
Greenland, and consequently the highest cultivated land in the world. In
the valley of the Alten River, the Scotch fir sometimes reaches a
height of seventy or eighty feet. This district is called the Paradise
of Finmark, and no doubt floats in the imaginations of the settlers on
Mageroe and the dreary Porsanger Fjord, as Andalusia and Syria float in
ours. It is well that human bliss is so relative in its character.

At Talvik, a cheerful village with a very neat, pretty church, who
should come on board but Pastor Hvoslef, our Kautokeino friend of the
last winter! He had been made one of a Government Commission of four,
appointed to investigate and report upon the dissensions between the
nomadic Lapps and those who have settled habitations. A better person
could not have been chosen than this good man, who has the welfare of
the Lapps truly at heart, and in whose sincerity every one in the North
confides.

We had on board Mr. Thomas, the superintendent of the copper works at
Kaafjord, who had just resigned his seat in the Storthing and given up
his situation for the purpose of taking charge of some mines at Copiapo,
in Chili. Mr. Thomas is an Englishman, who has been for twenty years
past one of the leading men of Finmark, and no other man, I venture to
say, has done more to improve and enlighten that neglected province. His
loss will not be easily replaced. At Talvik, his wife, a pleasant,
intelligent Norwegian lady, came on board; and, as we passed the rocky
portals guarding the entrance to the little harbour of Kaafjord, a gun,
planted on a miniature battery above the landing-place, pealed forth a
salute of welcome. I could partly understand Mr. Thomas's long residence
in those regions, when I saw what a wild, picturesque spot he had chosen
for his home. The cavernous entrances to the copper mines yawned in the
face of the cliff above the outer bay below, on the water's edge, stood
the smelting works, surrounded by labourers' cottages; a graceful white
church crowned a rocky headland a little further on; and beyond, above a
green lawn, decked with a few scattering birches, stood a comfortable
mansion, with a garden in the rear. The flag of Norway and the cross of
St. George floated from separate staffs on the lawn. There were a number
of houses, surrounded with potato-fields on the slope stretching around
the bay,