_klip_ (cliff) fish, by which they are known in trade.

At the mouth of the Tana we picked up four Englishmen, who had been
salmon fishing on the river. They were sunburnt, spotted with mosquito
bites, and had had little luck, the river being full of nets and the
fjord of seals, between which the best of the salmon are either caught
or devoured; but they spoke of their experience with true English
relish. "Oh, it was very jolly!" said one: "we were so awfully bitten by
mosquitoes. Then our interpreter always lost everything just before we
wanted it--think of his losing our frying-pan, so that we had to fry in
the lids of our kettles; He had a habit of falling overboard and getting
nearly drowned before we could pull him in. We had a rough time of it,
but it was very jolly, I assure you!" The young fellows meant what they
said; they were all the better for their roughing, and I wish the
spindle-shanked youths who polk and flirt at Newport and Saratoga had
manliness enough for such undertakings.

We reached Hammerfest on the last day of July, and re-occupied our old
quarters. That night the sun went below the horizon for the first time
in eight days, but his depth was too slight to make any darkness
visible. I was quite tired of the unending daylight, and would willingly
have exchanged the pomp of the arctic midnight for the starlit darkness
of home. We were confused by the loss of night; we lost the perception
of time. One is never sleepy, but simply tired, and after a sleep of
eight hours by sunshine, wakes up as tired as ever. His sleep at last is
broken and irregular; he substitutes a number of short naps, distributed
through the twenty-four hours, for the one natural repose, and finally
gets into a state of general uneasiness and discomfort. A Hammerfest
merchant, who has made frequent voyages to Spitzbergen, told me that in
the latitude of 80 deg. he never knew certainly whether it was day or night,
and the cook was the only person on board who could tell him.

At first the nocturnal sunshine strikes you as being wonderfully
convenient. You lose nothing of the scenery; you can read and write as
usual; you never need be in a hurry, because there is time enough for
everything. It is not necessary to do your day's work in the daytime,
for no night cometh. You are never belated, and somewhat of the stress
of life is lifted from your shoulders; but, after a time, you would be
glad of an excuse to stop seeing, and obser