less destructive, and which were formerly believed by the Laplanders to be "rained down" from heaven. Captain Clark Kennedy imputes this notion to the fact that the birds of prey which follow closely on the tracks of the lemmings sometimes drop their prizes alive from their talons, while flying at some height from the ground. They are yellow and white in color, with brown markings, and not at all ugly, and though few travellers are fortunate enough to witness a migration of them, they are frequently observed in the pinewoods, and occasionally seen to sit up and "wash their hands" like rabbits. Their appearance in great force takes place every three or four years, and they move invariably in a westerly direction, finding their only insurmountable obstacle in the North Sea. The same writer (who has interpreted so many of our English birds to us) says, in reference to this migration: "It is wonderful to think that such countless millions of tiny animals are all stirred by the same impulse to proceed in a given direction, and in a straight, unbroken line, no obstacle daunting this army of rodents in their migrations towards the ocean. They climb the steepest mountains, unless they can easily pass round them by traversing their lower ridges; they swim the broadest lakes, the widest arms of the sea, and all rivers that may lie in their line of march, utterly devastating the land over which they pass, and traversing in a short time immense tracts of country." In former ages, a solemn form of exorcism was used in Norway against these swarming creatures, which were bidden, in the name of the Blessed Trinity, to go away to those places in which they could harm no person, and there to waste away and decrease daily, until no remains of them should be found in any place. After the desolate but majestic fjeld, where clusters of heartsease and beautiful wild flowers grow amid the patches of snow and reindeer moss, where for a long day's journey Sneehatten, with its black-walled, snow-filled crater, is in view, where the snowy owl, and the eagle-owl, and the great eagles are seen, where the cold is bitter, come lovely open country, the beautiful Gunl, its fair valley, and such heat that exposure to the sun is dangerous. The sudden changes of climate are among the "againsts" of Norway, and so, very strongly, are the mosquitos. At Gunldal, where many bloody battles were fought in the wars between Norway and Sweden, there are hop-gardens and beds of lilies of the valley, strawberries and apricots.
At Throndhjem, famous in the old, savage times, the royal city of later days, the carriole is exchanged for the steamer, when one is en route for the Arctic circle, and the sea has its example of life in innumerable masses like the land. Near Besaker, the steamer cuts her way for hours through vast shoals of floating jelly-fish, moving with the tide, and shining with countless hues. The voyage among the islets along the coast is full of interest: the steamer passes quite close to their rugged sides, covered with masses of bird life, some of them quite white with seagulls, others colonized by terns, which decline to mix with the gulls; and the salt air full of their whirr and clangor, ceaseless by night and day. Anon one comes to the islands of Apelvaer, and to such heaps of codfish as can only be got hold of by the mind by the aid of the figures, that tell us how one year's fishery alone produces sixteen millions of fish, twenty-one thousand five hundred barrels of cod-liver oil, and six thousand barrels of cods' roe!
Near the Arctic line the scenery becomes most grand and beautiful, with its wonderful diversity of cliff and mountain and island, its deep, calm sea, with all the bird-laden islets, the life-thronged solitude in the steady, sustained smile of the sun, whose royal pomp is never bated there. The snow-crowned mountains, the steel-blue glaciers, the four peaks of the sentinel islands of Threnen, warders of the gates of the polar seas; Hestamandö, where the giant cavalry soldier, in everlasting rock, breasts the waves, and the Norse fishers doff their caps to "the horseman," — these are fine to see, and it is not surprising that when, at twelve o'clock at night, the blood-red ball of the sun hung over the gold and purple sea, and a thousand tinted rays danced in constant motion on the snow, there was deep silence on board the steamer whose voyage we are following, and the awe of a sublime spectacle in a measureless solitude fell upon all hearts.
Between the Loffoden Isles and Tromsö "there is an arm of the And Fjord to be crossed, and the water is literally covered and alive with birds, and with great shoals of mackerel and tumbling porpoises; sea-eagles sway and swoop above the ship, and the air is darkened with the strong flight of the northern diver, the guillemot, and the cormorant; while the masses on the rocks are hardly to be distinguished from the great heaps of seaweed." Thus, with so much to impress the imagination, and surely with all the pleasure that utter strangeness can bestow, change so complete that it must rest the weariest brain,
