VI-A Pilgrimage to Solovetsk. BY SAM. MAVOR, F.R.G.S. [Read before the Society, 7th February, 1900.] THE Course followed in this journey was that rendered romantic by its association with the intrepid explorers who first found a north-east passage into Russia. Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor in their search for a northern passage to China, rounded the North Cape, and sailing eastward along the coast of Lapland, entered the White Sea. Willoughby who attempted to winter there, was frozen in, and with his seventy companions perished of cold. But the more fortunate Chancellor reached Archangel, and thence by way of the Northern Dwina, travelled to Moscow, and a century-and-a-half before Peter the Great opened at St. Petersburg his window into Europe, inaugurated commercial and political relations between the England of Queen Elizabeth, and the Muscovy of Ivan the Terrible. In the absence of any direct line of steamers from this country to Archangel, the intending voyager may arrange for a passage on one of the ocean "tramps," which make summer voyages to the Northern Dwina, to load timber, or tar, or jute. But these vessels, giving the land a wide berth, keep far out to sea beyond the reefs and islands of the Norwegian coast. For a traveller who can afford the time, and who has not seen the coast of Norway, much the more interesting plan is to cross to Bergen or other port in South Norway, and thence proceed by Norwegian Coasting Steamers which navigate the intricate fiords calling at the many towns and settlements between Bergen and Hammerfest. By this route, he for whom the waves have terrors, may shirk the open sea, and incidentally include in his voyage, 1,200 miles of the grandest coast line in the world, the most rich in natural beauties and legendary association. Owing to postponement of the date of sailing of a tramp steamer, an arrangement made with her captain to carry me to Archangel had to be abandoned, and the Norway coast route adopted. In June the excellent little Norwegian Mail Steamers are crowded on their northward voyages with young men homeward bound on holiday bent. The surplus sons of the hardy race of fishermen do not see scope for their ambition in a seat on the thwart of their father's boat, and they leave the trim settlements in their native fiords, to go afield to the Polytechnic schools and universities of Christiana, of Copenhagen, and of Germany, and then to win their way in a wider world. Every stopping place claims one or more of these sturdy youths, and the waiting boats manned by bright-eyed sisters (or others), beaming with eager welcome receive with much fond chatter the home made travelling trunk and its home-coming owner. The beautiful little crafts, the most graceful of their kind, and managed with a skill that tells of childhood spent upon the water-speed with their happy cargo to the shore, or their crews settle steadily to a long pull away up some dark fiord where their timber home sits at the meeting of the mountain and the sea. The settlements of these Nordland fisher folk are those of industrious and prosperous people. Probably none of them are rich, but none of them seem very poor, and they have evidently a tolerably high standard of comfort. Between Tromso and Hammerfest are some of the most striking features of this disorderly and unshapely coast. Owing to the late summer, snow remained more generally than is usual. In every cleft and corry it lay to the water's edge, and on the higher mountains the eternal snowfields spread their wide expanse of glistening white, the view from seaward recalling the aspect of the north-west coast of Iceland. Glaciers wind between the mountains' flanks, and terminate abruptly where their huge snouts front the sea in deep green walls of solid ice. Here we were favoured with the most brilliant weather, and entered the region of the "Midnight Sun." On this wild coast the unearthly beauties of the colouring and the shades upon the mountains are grander far and more impressive than when the phenomenon is viewed on the open sea. No pen can paint the glories of these nightless arctic nights, the gold and purple splendours of the sky, the sea, and hills. On leaving Throndiem, the steamer was overcrowded with homeward bound Norwegians, and I was the only foreigner; but as we progressed towards the Cape, our company diminished, until at Hammerfest only one other passenger remained—a fairhaired, beamy daughter of the North bound for Vadso, with a smile as bright and broad as an inverted rainbow. Hammerfest-the northmost town in the world-was still surrounded by the winter snows, and here, while the summer sun shone through the night, the naked lamp-posts in the streets gave token of electric light. Guided by the route of the overhead cables, the visitor may find in a valley a mile or two away, a dynamo house where the power of a mountain torrent that plunges through a snow crested gorge is tethered to a turbine, and illumines the sunless days of winter in the little wooden town. Near the North Cape the weather became dull and much colder with heavy rain, and the leaden gloom of sea and sky, and the mist wreaths on the snowy hills gave the grim arctic coast a weird and wintry aspect. The so-called North Cape, a bluff and lofty precipice, is not on the mainland, nor is it the northmost headland of Europe. This distinction belongs to the Nordkyn, which farther to the east and north thrusts out into the Polar Sea a promontory shaped like the ram of a battle ship. From Bergen to the North Cape the sailing had been almost entirely in the sheltered waters of the coast before a continuous and imposing panorama of jagged mountains, sombre fiords, and glaciers. The ever changing scenes and the ceaseless demands upon one's admiration had become fatiguing, and when the northern headlands were rounded, and the ship laid upon an eastward course encountering a bitter wind and tumbling sea, it was a relief to retreat to a comfortable cabin with the consciousness that nothing was being missed. In the grey mist of a drizzling evening we groped our way through a fleet of quaint fishing craft of every size and shape, into the crowded harbour of Vardo, where through the rain-haze nothing was very distinct but the overpowering stench of putrid fish. The air was heavy with such a smell of every variety of fish in every stage of decay, as polite words are useless to describe, Vardo, the principal town on the coast of Finmarken, is devoted entirely to the fishing industry, and the whole surface of the rocky little island is draped and festooned with the myriad carcases of codfish hung up to dry. Nothing could be more miserably depressing than the rain-sodden aspect of the mean little wooden town on this chill and cheerless evening. Timber houses when wet look wetter than stone buildings. The moisture clings to them and soaks, and the ceaseless drip, drip from the gutterless roofs into the puddles beneath, wearies the unaccustomed ear. About the slimy wharves of rotting piles, great open vats of crude cod liver oil add their sickening effluvia to the general stink. The muddy streets, the shore and wharves are littered with the decomposing inwards of the fish that hang around, and discontented looking goats feed on the trodden putrid garbage. No wonder they look dejected, these scavengers of Vardo; they have nothing else to eat. Even the cattle, but they are few, are fed on the boiled heads of codfish varied by a diet of seaweed. The only green is on the houses' grass-grown roofs, and this is nibbled by tame rabbits whose hutches are perched upon these scanty parks. Last winter was severe at Vardo, and the town was buried under zo feet of snow. The natives were now pining for the laggard summer, but although far within the so-called “Region of the Midnight Sun," they had scarcely seen his rays for three long weeks of chill incessant rain. Even the stoic fishermen were weary of the deadly monotony of the low sky whose uniform grey was only slightly less dull at mid-day than at midnight. was not surprising that the Russians among them celebrated their national midsummer-day (their calendar the Julian is twelve days later than ours), in their customary way by drinking too much, and disturbing the peace with their wild shouts and drunken brawls. It Having arrived at Vardo, the immediate and most pressing problem was how to get away from the poor little waterlogged town and the all pervading poison of the atmosphere that broods around it. But the means of speedy escape were cut off, for the Russian Government had ordered all the steamers on the coast to carry free of cost to Ekaterina all who cared to go, for they wished to have some show of people at the official opening of Russia's first and only ice-free naval port. The traffic of the steamers eastward was thus completely disorganised, and the Russian agent at |