The Argosy — page 149: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

134 About Norway. believe. As I saw them last year, so, readers, you may see them next. Unchangeable, unchanging. And what a marvellons sight they were. As we approached they stood out boldly before us; rising out of the midst of the sea; massive, granite mountains ; a long, unbroken range, with sharp cutting peaks that might have done duty for grand cathedral towers. The whole range, indeed, might have stood for one vast cathedral of nature ‘*‘ measureless to min.” High, perpendicular walls, bold and barren, peaks jagged and sharp, rising 4,000 feet above the water ; rocks bare and savage, or covered with green lichen only visible on a near approach. The entire length of the Lofoden Islands is about 130 English miles, possessing an area of 1,560 square miles, anda population of 20,000 inhabitants. But as we approached nothing could be seen but this wide, towering, peaked wall of granite. For all sign of life and labour, we might have been hastening to an unknown, untrodden land. The sun shot down behind these high peaks, the sky became flushed with crimson, the islands tinged with red. The whole view was something almost too glorious for earth. Before us these wild mountains, behind us those snow-hills stretching into space, equally flushed with rosy light. Yet it was some disappointment to see the sun disappear behind the Lofodens. Though there would be no real sunset, and therefore the midnight sun, we should see no sun at midnight. Practically for us the sun had set when he went out of sight. So we contented ourselves with watching the marvellous tones and colours that enveloped us like a glorious heavenly light—or, at least, of some unearthly paradise. The most -gorgeous Eastern imagery and imagination could do no justice to these flashing, flickering, changing lights and shadows, the opals and violets, the greens and reds, the rose-coloured tints that flashed and sparkled in earth, sea, and sky, in the very air itself, as if the heavens had been one vast diamond reflecting its countless rays around. The colours deepened over the Lofodens, which stood out sharply like some northern Dolomites, yet grander in their situation and entirety : revealing themselves, as they did, at one glance. Presently we got close upon them, and steered into a little harbour, where some of the romance was taken out of us by the fearful smell of dried fish which came wafted on the wind: breezes fancy could no longer look upon as rose-coloured or scent-laden. Huge stacks of fish lay upon the rocks, and strings of them were drying in the wind. Above all this, on one of the low green hills, a youth in quaint Lofoden costume was playing upon a pipe, and evidently serenading us. It was a sylvan, musical sound, and the youth lying idly upon the brow of the hill might almost have been an Arcadian shepherd: only that in Arcadia they never could have had this intolerable smell of fish to take the romance out of everything. | But what was our surprise in this far northern island, to hear this Eomicbooks.co