sive forests of their beards, and exercised the law
of retaliation on all the game they caught.

A long street of turf-roofed houses, whose inhabitants may be said to be
under the sod even before they die, leads along the shore of the bay to
a range of flakes redolent of drying codfish. Beyond this you clamber
over rocks and shingles to a low grassy headland, whereon stands a
pillar commemorating the measurement of a meridian line of 25 deg. 20', from
the Danube to the Polar Sea, which was accomplished by the Governments
of Austria, Russia, and Sweden, between the years 1816 and 1852. The
pillar marks the northern terminus of the line, and stands in lat. 70 deg.
40' 11.3". It is a plain shaft of polished red granite, standing on a
base of grey granite, and surmounted by a bronze globe, on which a map
of the earth is roughly outlined.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE RETURN TO DARKNESS.--NORWEGIAN CHARACTER.

I do not intend to trace our return, step by step, down the Norwegian
coast. The splendid weather which prevailed during our upward voyage,
enabled us to see all the interesting points, leaving only those parts
which we missed in the few hours devoted to sleep, to give a little
novelty to our return. During the whole trip we had not a drop of
rain,--the rarest good fortune in these latitudes,--and were therefore
twice enabled to enjoy, to the fullest extent, the sublime scenery of
the Lofoden Isles and the coast of Nordland. This voyage has not its
like in the world. The traveller, to whom all other lands are familiar,
has here a new volume of the most wonderful originality and variety,
opened to him. The days are illuminated pages, crowded with pictures,
the forms and hues of which he can never forget. After I returned to the
zone of darkness, and recovered from the stress and tension of three
weeks of daylight, I first fully appreciated the splendours of the
arctic sun. My eyes were still dazzled with the pomp of colour, and the
thousand miles of coast, as I reviewed them in memory, with their chaos
of island-pyramids of shattered rock, their colossal cliffs, their
twisted fjords, and long fjeld-levels of eternal snow, swam in a sea of
saffron and rosy light, in comparison with which the pale blue day
around me seemed dull and dead. My dream of the North, in becoming a
reality, has retained the magical atmosphere of dreams, and basks in the
same gorgeous twilight which irradiates the Scandinavian sagas.

I was p