HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



225 



A little farther on the road and I came upon a 

 summer dry swamp mantled over with cloud-berry 

 leaves, which here in the northland, carpet the low 

 ground, but farther south retire higher up between 

 the mountains. It occurred that the proprietors had 

 not entertained the notion of demand and supply, or 

 noticed the strife for existence depicted in many a 

 yellow and white blotch at hand, or they would have 

 cleared away the roots and weeds and transformed 

 the brown peat into a garden of cloud-berries, and 

 planted it about with an orchard of red rowans ; and 

 Jiere are wild monk's-hood and a feathery cistus to make 

 ■the walks and alleys gay. Well, a Scotchman once 

 said that to reclaim Scotland meant to spoil it, and 

 in one sense he was right ; a woodcock that this 

 moment fled from the brushwood held a similar 

 view. 



Places and scenes the world over have for the 



northland maidens. Through these birchen bowers 

 I got a glimpse of the rocky islets of Lofotodden and 

 Vaero, and a purple line of water between, where of 

 old lay the ship-engulfing malstrom. I recall having 

 seen the waves of Corryvrechan break from the raised 

 deck of the lona steamship, but on the malstrom 

 I did not observe the ghost of a ruffle. 



On resuming the ascent I found that the track 

 before me had vanished, and then it was a hop, skip 

 and jump, over bog, over stone, over berries and 

 willows various, until I gained an elevation where 

 the birches grew prostrate and contorted like the 

 snakes that sprang from the enchanter's rods — mere 

 roots and leaves. 



When I emerged on the tabular plateaux on the 

 mountain top it was ten p.m., and the sun stood over 

 the long line of the Lofodens, whose wintry peaks, 

 like the jagged saw of a shark's maw, bounded the 



Fig. 132. — The Peaks of the Lofoden Isles. Passing the Sjn at Midnight. 



•emigrant their family resemblances, and I had not 

 gone farther on the narrowing path, before I had 

 already mistaken it for the sheep's track that conducts 

 ■up the mountain on the north [of Charsaig Bay in 

 Argyleshire, which the reader may have already 

 •trodden : contorted crags, a smaller Jura in prospect, 

 everything had been hitherward transported ; and 

 here also was the expected byre at the foot of a steep 

 and stony gorge, where small whity-brown cows with 

 antelope horns, over whose back you might have 

 comfortably vaulted, were being milked. A half- 

 penny to a dark-eyed woman who loved wild flowers, 

 filled my brandy-flask, with an inexhaustible draught 

 •to spare, and then I tackled^the pull up, past fish 

 tank one and two — there were five at successive 

 iieights — until I drew breath on the brink of a darker 

 tarn with a boulder in it, just opposite a silent orange 

 mirage of birch-scrub, lint white as the locks of the 



seaward view. It fell perceptibly no lower, but 

 appearing to pause, and casting a vermilion beam 

 like a warning beacon, it ran as a billiard ball 

 its midnight course. The orange-dyed water below- 

 spread calmly like a magic mirror, blurred with 

 emerald in the tideway, and the shadows of the 

 surrounding snow-streaked pinnacles dissolved in it 

 deep and beautifully blue ; while a fishing-smack, 

 apparently no larger than the full-stop that rounds 

 this paragraph, floated out into the skimmer as 

 though it slept in contemplation. The stonechats 

 in the hushed ravines alone remained less restful and 

 dreamy, for they were incessantly provoking their 

 friends of a feather with a recitative, and then a 

 sudden splash ! splash ! was borne on the ear from 

 the bay on the right, where something black was 

 circling in the water. Very suggestive of the Lofoden 

 krake that appeared to Fetter Smines and Son the 



