not a pleasant subject of contemplation. When the light
of day found its way into our dreary abode of misery, I went on deck.
The weather was thick, and nothing was to be seen in any direction but
a rough, chopping sea and flakes of drifting fog. A few
doleful-looking tourists were searching for the land through their
opera-glasses. They appeared to be sorry they ever undertook such a
stormy and perilous voyage, and evidently had misgivings that they
might never again see their native country. Some of them peeped over
the bulwarks from time to time, with a faint hope, perhaps, of seeing
something new in that direction; but from the singular noises they
made, and the convulsive motions of their bodies, I had reason to
suspect they were heaving some very heavy sighs at their forlorn fate.
The waiters were continually running about with cups of coffee, which
served to fortify the stomachs of these hardy adventurers against
sea-sickness. I may here mention as a curious fact that in all my
travels I have rarely met a sea-going gentleman who could be induced
to acknowledge that he suffered the least inconvenience from the
motion of the vessel. A headache, a fit of indigestion, the remains of
a recent attack of gout, a long-standing rheumatism, a bilious colic
to which he had been subject for years, a sudden and unaccountable
shock of vertigo, a disorganized condition of the liver--something, in
short, entirely foreign to the known and recognized laws of motion,
disturbed his equilibrium, but rarely an out-and-out case of
sea-sickness. That is a weakness of human nature fortunately confined
to the ladies. Indeed, I don't know what the gentler sex would do if
it were not for the kindness of Providence in exempting the ruder
portion of humanity from this unpleasant accompaniment of sea-life,
only it unfortunately happens that the gentlemen are usually afflicted
with some other dire and disabling visitation about the same time.

[Illustration: THE STEAMER ENTERING THE FJORD.]

Toward noon the fog broke away, and we sighted the rocky headlands of
the Christiania Fjord. In a few hours more we were steaming our way
into this magnificent sheet of water at a dashing rate, and the decks
were crowded with a gay and happy company. No more the pangs of
despised love, indigestion, gout, and bilious colic disturbed the
gentlemen of this lively party; no more the fair ladies of Hamburg and
Copenhagen hid themselves away in their state-ro