ortively at architecture,
sculpture, and castle-building,--constructing now a high monumental
column or a mounted warrior, and now a Gothic fane amid, regions
strange, lonely, and savage. There are grand mountains and glaciers
in Switzerland, but they do not rise directly out of the ocean as
they do here in Scandinavia; and as to the scenery afforded by the
innumerable fjords winding inland, amid forests, cliffs, and
impetuous waterfalls, nowhere else can these be seen save on this
remarkable coast. Like rivers, and yet so unlike them in width,
depth, and placidity, with their broad mouths guarded by clustering
islands, one can find nothing in Nature more grand, solemn, and
impressive than a Norwegian fjord. Now and again the shores are lined
for brief distances by the greenest of green pastures, dotted with
little red houses and groups of domestic animals, forming bits of
verdant foreground backed by dark gorges. Down precipitous cliffs
leap cascades, which are fed by ice-fields hidden in the lofty
mountains so close at hand. These are not merely pretty spouts like
many a little Swiss device, but grand, plunging, restless torrents,
conveying heavy volumes of foaming water. An artist's eye would revel
in the twilight glory of carmine, orange, and indigo which floods the
atmosphere and the sea amid such scenery as we have faintly
depicted.

CHAPTER VIII.

Birds of the Arctic Regions. -- Effect of Continuous Daylight. --
Town of Tromsoee. -- The Aurora Borealis. -- Love of Flowers. --
The Growth of Trees. -- Butterflies. -- Home Flowers. -- Trees.
-- Shooting Whales with Cannon. -- Pre-Historic Relics. -- About
Laplanders. -- Eider Ducks. -- A Norsk Wedding Present. --
Gypsies of the North. -- Pagan Rites. -- The Use of the Reindeer.
-- Domestic Life of the Lapps. -- Marriage Ceremony. -- A Gypsy
Queen. -- Lapp Babies. -- Graceful Acknowledgment.

We have said nothing about the feathered tribes of Norway, though all
along this coast, which is so eaten and corroded by the action of the
sea, the birds are nearly as numerous as the fishes. They are far
more abundant than the author has ever seen them in any other part of
the world. Many islands, beginning at the Lofodens and reaching to
the extreme end of the peninsula, are solely occupied by them as
breeding places. Their numbers are beyond calculation; one might as
well try to get at the aggregate number of flies in a given space in
midsummer.