t defiance of all natural laws. Yet they have at least
an excuse for it, in the miraculous provision which Providence has made
for their food and fuel. The sea and fjords are alive with fish, which
are not only a means of existence but of profit to them, while the
wonderful Gulf Stream, which crosses 5000 miles of the Atlantic to die
upon this Ultima Thule in a last struggle with the Polar Sea, casts up
the spoils of tropical forests to feed their fires. Think of arctic
fishers burning upon their hearths the palms of Hayti, the mahogany of
Honduras, and the precious woods of the Amazon and the Orinoco!

In the spring months, there are on an average 800 vessels on the
northern coast, between the North Cape and Vadso, with a fishing
population of 5000 men on board, whose average gains, even at the scanty
prices they receive amount to $30 apiece, making a total yield of
$150,000. It is only within a very few years that the Norwegian
Government has paid any attention to this far corner of the peninsula.
At present, considering the slender population, the means of
communication are well kept up during eight months in the year, and the
result is an increase (perceptible to an old resident, no doubt) in the
activity and prosperity of the country.

On issuing from the strait, we turned southward into the great Porsanger
Fjord, which stretches nearly a hundred miles into the heart of Lapland,
dividing Western from Eastern Finmark. Its shores are high monotonous
hills, half covered with snow, and barren of vegetation except patches
of grass and moss. If once wooded, like the hills of the Alten Fjord,
the trees have long since disappeared, and now nothing can be more bleak
and desolate. The wind blew violently from the east, gradually lifting a
veil of grey clouds from the cold pale sky, and our slow little steamer
with jib and fore-topsail set, made somewhat better progress. Toward
evening (if there is such a time in the arctic summer), we reached
Kistrand, the principal settlement on the fjord. It has eight or nine
houses, scattered along a gentle slope a mile in length, and a little
red church, but neither gardens, fields, nor potato patches. A strip of
grazing ground before the principal house was yellow with dandelions,
the slope behind showed patches of brownish green grass, and above this
melancholy attempt at summer stretched the cold, grey, snow-streaked
ridge of the hill. Two boats, manned by sea-Lapps, with square blue