When we awoke, after six hours' sleep, with curtains drawn to keep out
the daylight, our steamer was deep in the Tana Fjord, which receives the
waters of the Tana River, the largest Lapland stream flowing into the
Arctic Ocean. The greater part of the day was consumed in calling at two
settlements of three houses each, and receiving and delivering mails of
one letter, or less. The shores of this fjord are steep hills of bare
rock, covered with patches of snow to the water's edge. The riven walls
of cliff, with their wonderful configuration and marvellous colouring,
were left behind us, and there was nothing of the grand or picturesque
to redeem the savage desolation of the scenery. The chill wind, blowing
direct from Nova Zembla, made us shiver, and even the cabin saloon was
uncomfortable without a fire. After passing the most northern point of
Europe, the coast falls away to the south-east, so that on the second
night we were again in the latitude of Hammerfest, but still within the
sphere of perpetual sunshine. Our second night of sun was not so rich in
colouring as the first, yet we remained on deck long enough to see the
orb rise again from his lowest dip, and change evening into morning by
the same incomprehensible process. There was no golden transfiguration
of the dreadful shore; a wan lustre played over the rocks--pictures of
eternal death--like a settled pallor of despair on Nature's stony face.

One of the stations on this coast, named Makur, consisted of a few
fishermen's huts, at the bottom of a dismal rocky bight. There was no
grass to be seen, except some tufts springing from the earth with which
the roofs were covered, and it was even difficult to see where so much
earth had been scraped together. The background was a hopelessly barren
hill, more than half enveloped in snow. And this was midsummer--and
human beings passed their lives here! "Those people surely deserve to
enter Paradise when they die," I remarked to my friend, "for they live
in hell while upon earth." "Not for that," he answered, "but because it
is impossible for them to commit sin. They cannot injure their
neighbours, for they have none. They cannot steal, for there is nothing
to tempt them. They cannot murder, for there are none of the usual
incentives to hate and revenge. They have so hard a struggle merely _to
live_, that they cannot fall into the indulgences of sense; so that if
there is nothing recorded in their favour, there is also