284 NORWAY. 



made to kindle a mighty blaze and make merry. On 

 St. John's Eve, bonfires leap and roar over the length 

 and breadth of the land. 



The manner in which the people rejoiced upon thil 

 occasion was curious and amusing. But here I must 

 turn aside for one moment to guard myself from miscon- 

 struction. It needs little reasoning to prove that where 

 the mountains rise something like walls into the clouds, 

 and are covered with everlasting ice, the inhabitants of 

 the valleys may have exceedingly little intercourse with 

 each other. The doings on this occasion may or may 

 not have been peculiar, in some points, to this particular 

 valley at the head of the Nord fiord. I simply describe 

 what I saw. 



It was midnight when we went to a field at the base 

 of a mountain to witness the rejoicings of the people. 

 But the midnight hour wore not the sombre aspect of 

 night in our more southerly climes. The sun had indeed 

 set, but the blaze of his refulgent beams still shot up into 

 the zenith, and sent a flood of light over the whole sky. 

 In fact, it was almost broad daylight, and the only change 

 that took place that night was the gradual increasing of 

 the light as the sun rose again, at a preposterously early 

 hour, to recommence his long- continued journey through 

 the summer sky. 



Assembled on the greensward of the field, and sur- 

 rounded by mountains whose summits were snow-capped 

 and whose precipitous sides were seamed with hundreds 

 of cataracts that gushed from frozen caves, were upwards 



