ver survived to tell of--and the six
hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and
soul. You suppose me a _very_ old man--but I am not. It took less than a
single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken
my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least
exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look
over this little cliff without getting giddy?"

The "little cliff," upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself
down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while
he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme
and slippery edge--this "little cliff" arose, a sheer, unobstructed
precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet
from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to
within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth, so deeply was I
excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full
length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not
even glance upward at the sky--while I struggled in vain to divest
myself of the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in
danger from the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason
myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance.

"You must get over these fancies," said the guide, "for I have brought
you here that you might have the best possible view of the scene of that
event I mentioned--and to tell you the whole story with the spot just
under your eye.

"We are now," he continued in that particularizing manner which
distinguished him--"we are now close upon the Norwegian coast--in the
sixty-eighth degree of latitude--in the great province of Nordland--and
in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is
Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher--hold on to
the grass if you feel giddy--so--and look out, beyond the belt of vapor
beneath us, into the sea."

I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore
so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's
account of the _Mare Tenebrarum_. A panorama more deplorably desolate no
human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye
could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines
of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but