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small island of Tromsö, where about fifty years since only a few fishermen resided, whose huts have gradually expanded into a thriving little town of about 3000 inhabitants, along the shore opposite the mainland. Its staple exports are dried and salted cod, and train-oil. The livers of the cod are put in open barrels and placed in the sun, and the melted portion which rises to the surface is skimmed off, being the purest oil. The coarse refuse is boiled in great iron pots by the side of the sea, and yields the common "train-oil." The muscular matter which remains is collected into barrels and exported as a powerful manure; some of it is sent to England.

The town consists mainly of one long straggling street, following the windings of the shore, and has a picturesque appearance from the harbor. The houses are all of wood painted with lively colors, and the roofs, mostly covered with grass, diversified with bright clusters of yellow and white flowers, look pretty in summer. Tromsö has a Latin school, and even boasts of a newspaper, the Tromsö Tidende et Blan for Nordland og Finmarken ("The Tromsö Gazette, a paper for Nordland and Finmark"). This paper is published twice a week; and as only one mail arrives at Tromsö every three weeks, the foreign news is given by instalments, spreading over six successive numbers, until a fresh dispatch arrives.

The island of Tromsö is beautifully situated, being on all sides environed by mountains, so that it seems to lie in the midst of a huge salt lake. Its surface rises in gentle slopes to a tolerable elevation, and no other Arctic isle contains richer pasturage, or dwarf plantations of greater luxuriance. Many meadows are yellow with buttercups and picturesque underwood, and the heathy hills are covered with shrubs, bearing bright berries of many hues. The pride of the Tromsöites in their island and town, and their profound attachment to it, are remarkable. No Swiss can be more enthusiastically bound to his mountains and vales, than they are to their circumscribed domain.

To the north of Tromsö lies the broad and deep Altenfjord, whose borders are studded with numerous dwellings, and where the botanist meets with a vegetation that may well raise his astonishment in so high a latitude. Here the common birch-tree grows 1450 feet, and the Vaccinium myrtillus 2030 feet above the level of the sea; the dwarf birch (Betula nana) still vegetates at a height of 2740 feet, and the Arctic willow is even found as high as 3500 feet, up to the limits of perennial snow.

Alten is moreover celebrated through its copper-mines. A piece of ore having been found by a Lap-woman in the year 1825, accidentally fell into the hands of Mr. Crowe, an English merchant in Hammerfest. This gentleman immediate-* ly took measures for obtaining a privilege from Government for the working of the mines, and all preliminaries being arranged, set off for London, where he founded a company, with a capital of £75,000. When Marmier visited the Altenfjord in 1842, more than 1100 workmen were employed in these most northerly mining-works of the world, and not seldom more than ten English vessels at a time were busy unloading coals at Kaafjord for the smelting of the ores. New copper-works had recently been opened on the opposite side of the bay at Raipass, and since then the establishment has considerably increased.

Hammerfest, the capital of Finmark, situated on the west side of the island of Hvalö, in 70° 39′ 15′′, is the most northern town in the world. Half a century since, it had but 44 inhabitants; at present its population amounts to 1200. As at Tromsö, very many of the houses, forming one long street winding round the shore, have grass sown on their roofs, which gives the latter the appearance of little plots of meadows. With us the expression," he sleeps with grass above his head," is equivalent to saying "he is in his grave;" but here it may only mean that he sleeps beneath the verdant roof of his daily home. Many large warehouses are built on piles projecting into the water, with landing-quays before them; and numerous ranges of open sheds are filled with reindeer skins, wolf and bear skins, walrus tusks, reindeer horns, train-oil, and dried fish, ready for exportation. The chief home traffic of Hammerfest consists in barter with the Laps, who exchange their reindeer skins for brandy, tobacco, hardware, and cloth. Some enterprising merchants annually fit out vessels for walrus and seal hunting at Spitzbergen and Bear Island, but the principal trade is with Archangel, and is carried on entirely in "lodjes," or White Sea ships, with three single upright masts, each hoisting a huge try-sail. These vessels supply Hammerfest with Russian rye, meal, candles, etc., and receive stock-fish and train-oil in exchange. Sometimes, also, an English ship arrives with a supply of coals.

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The fishing-grounds off the coast of Finmark, whose produce forms the staple article of the merchants of Hammerfest, are scarcely inferior in importance to those of Lofoten, the number of cod taken here in 1866 amounting to 15,000,000. A great part of the fish is purchased by the Russians as it comes out of the water. Of the prepared cod, Spain takes the largest quantity, as in 1865 upwards of 44,000,000 lbs. of clip-fish (nearly the whole yield for the year) was consigned to that country. Of the dried variety, 10,000,000 lbs. were exported to the Mediterranean, and upwards of 4,000,000 lbs. more to Italy. Sweden and Holland come next in order, the supply in each case being over 5,000,000 lbs. Great Britain takes scarcely any stock-fish, but 1,500,000 lbs. of clip-fish, and the large export to the West Indies is almost entirely composed of the lat ter article.

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The winter, though long and dark, has no terrors for the jolly Hammerfestfor all the traders and shopkeepers form a united aristocracy, and rarely a night passes without a feast, a dance, and a drinking-bout. The day when the ṣun re-appears is one of general rejoicing; the first who sees the great luminary proclaims it with a loud voice, and every body rushes into the street to exchange congratulations with his neighbors. The island of Hvalö has a most dreary, sterile aspect, and considerable masses of snow fill the ravines even in summer. The birch, however, is still found growing 620 feet above the sea, but the fir has disappeared.

It may well be supposed that no stranger has ever sojourned in this interesting place, the farthest outpost of civilization towards the Pole, without visiting, or at least attempting to visit, the far-famed North Cape, situated about sixty miles from Hammerfest, on the island of Magerö, where a few Norwegians live in earthen huts, and, still manage to rear a few heads of cattle. The voyage to this magnificent headland, which fronts the sea with a steep rock-wall nearly a

thousand feet high, is frequently difficult and precarious, nor can it be scaled without considerable fatigue; but the view from the summit amply rewards the trouble, and it is no small satisfaction to stand on the brink of the most northern promontory of Europe.

"It is impossible," says Mr. W. Hurton, " adequately to describe the emotion experienced by me as I stepped up to the dizzy verge. I only know that I devoutly returned thanks to the Almighty for thus permitting me to realize one darling dream of my boyhood. Despite the wind, which here blew violently and bitterly cold, I sat down, and wrapping my cloak around me, long contemplated the spectacle of Nature in one of her sublimest aspects. I was truly alone. Not a living object was in sight; beneath my feet was the boundless expanse of ocean, with a sail or two on its bosom at an immense distance; above me was the canopy of heaven, flecked with fleecy cloudlets; the sun was luridly gleaming over a broad belt of blood-red mist; the only sounds were the whistling of the wandering winds and the occasional plaintive scream of the hovering sea-fowl. The only living creature which came near me was a bee, which hummed merrily by. What did the busy insect seek there? Not a blade of grass grew, and the only vegetable matter on this point was a cluster of withered moss at the very edge of the awful precipice, and this I gathered, at considerable risk, as a memorial of the visit."

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SPITZBERGEN-BEAR ISLAND-JAN MEYEN.

The west Coast of Spitzbergen.-Ascension of a Mountain by Dr. Scoresby.-His Excursion along the Coast.-A stranded Whale.-Magdalena Bay.-Multitudes of Sea-birds.-Animal Life.-Midnight Silence. Glaciers. A dangerous Neighborhood.- Interior Plateau.-Flora of Spitzbergen. —Its Similarity with that of the Alps above the Snow-line.-Reindeer.—The hyperborean Ptarmigan.Fishes.-Coal.-Drift-wood.-Discovery of Spitzbergen by Barentz, Heemskerk, and Ryp.-Brilliant Period of the Whale-fishery.-Coffins.-Eight English Sailors winter in Spitzbergen, 1630.—Melancholy Death of some Dutch Volunteers.--Russian Hunters.-Their Mode of wintering in Spitzbergen.-Scharostin.--Walrus-ships from Hammerfest and Tromsö.--Bear or Cherie Island-Bennet. --Enormous Slaughter of Walruses.-Mildness of its Climate.-Mount Misery.--Adventurous Boatvoyage of some Norwegian Sailors.-Jan Meyen.—Beerenberg.

THE

HE archipelago of Spitzbergen consists of five large islands: West Spitzbergen, North-east Land, Stans Foreland, Barentz Land, Prince Charles. Foreland; and of a vast number of smaller ones, scattered around their coasts. Its surface is about equal to that of two-thirds of Scotland; its most southern point (76° 30′ N. lat.) lies nearer to the Pole than Melville Island; and Ross Islet, at its northern extremity (80° 49′ N. lat.), looks out upon the unknown ocean, which perhaps extends without interruption as far as the Straits of Bering.

Of all the Arctic countries that have hitherto been discovered, Grinnell

Land and Washington alone lie nearer to the Pole; but while these ice-blocked regions can only be reached with the utmost difficulty, the western and north-western coasts of Spitzbergen, exposed to the mild south-westerly winds, and to the influence of the Gulf Stream, are frequently visited, not only by walrus-hunters and Arctic explorers, but by amateur travellers and sportsmen.

The eastern coasts are far less accessible, and in parts have never yet been accurately explored. As far as they are known, they are not so bold and indented as the western and north-western coasts, which, projecting in mighty capes or opening a passage to deep fjords, have been gnawed into every variety of fantastic form by the corroding power of an eternal winter, and justify, by their endless succession of jagged spikes and break-neck acclivities, the name of Spitzbergen, which its first Dutch discoverers gave to this land of “serrated peaks.”

The mountains on the west coast are very steep, many of them inaccessible, and most of them dangerous to climb, either from the smooth hard snow with which they are encrusted even in summer, or from the looseness of the disintegrated stones which cover the parts denuded by the sun, and give way under the slightest pressure of the foot.

More than one daring seaman has paid dearly for his temerity in venturing to scale these treacherous heights. The supercargo, or owner, of the very first Dutch whaler that visited Spitzbergen (1612) broke his neck in attempting to climb a steep mountain in Prince Charles Foreland, and Barentz very nearly lost several of his men under similar circumstances. Dr. Scoresby, who in the course of his whaling expeditions touched at Spitzbergen no less than seventeen times, was more successful in scaling a mountain 3000 feet high, near Mitre Cape, though the approach to the summit was by a ridge so narrow that he could only advance by sitting astride upon its edge. But the panorama which he beheld, after having attained his object, amply repaid him for the danger and fatigue of clambering for several hours over loose stones, which at every step rolled with fearful rapidity into the abyss beneath.

"The prospect," says the distinguished naturalist," was most extensive and grand. A fine sheltered bay was seen to the east of us; an arm of the same on the north-east; and the sea, whose glassy surface was unruffled by a breeze, formed an immense expanse on the west; the icebergs, rearing their proud crests almost to the tops of the mountains between which they were lodged, and defying the power of the solar beams, were scattered in various directions about the sea-coast and in the adjoining bays. Beds of snow and ice, filling extensive hollows and giving an enamelled coat to adjoining valleys, one of which, commencing at the foot of the mountain where we stood, extended in a continued line towards the north as far as the eye could reach; mountain rising above mountain, until by distance they dwindled into insignificance; the whole contrasted by a cloudless canopy of deepest azure, and enlightened by the rays of a blazing sun, and the effect aided by a feeling of danger-seated, as we were, on the pinnacle of a rock, almost surrounded by tremendous precipices; all united to constitute a picture singularly sublime.

"Our descent we found really a very hazardous, and in some instances a

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