Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/213

and rain poured in torrents. The thermometer stood at 48 degrees. I believe, it stood at 78 degrees in London and at 98 degrees in Calcutta about this time of year! We left Hammerfest (the most northern town in the world) early in the morning and in the afternoon we entered into a magnificent fiord called the Lingen Fiord.Lingen Fiord. Like most of the Norwegian fiords it runs from the sea about 20 or 30 miles inland, and seemed like a long winding beautiful lake with magnificent rocks on both sides rising abruptly from the water to a height of thousands of feet. As we steamed through this fiord the scene changed every instant, and new combinations of rocks and valley struck us at every moment. In some places magnificent rocks rose precipitously from the water to a height of three or four thousand feet and towered in the sky—bleak, bold and sublime. In other places the retreating rocks left before us a basin where streamlets collected from all sides. Snow rested in every hollow and crevice in large white masses. Streamlets leapt from crag to crag and descended in silver tresses along the bold rocks at every turn that we took, while in many places large glaciers hung on the slopes of high rocks in their lovely bluish color and superb crystal beauty. Glaciers are streams of ice slowly descending from mountains and hanging on the slopes of those mountains from century to century. The white mass gradually descends, but so slowly that its progress is imperceptible to the eye. But as it descends and the lower parts melt, fresh ice forms in the upper part, and the great mass, therefore, remains the same