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HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



Monday before Easter this eventually took the shape 

 of certain heavy shark or salmon that came leaping 

 shoreward. 



It was now upon the stroke of midnight, and 

 marking the lofty peak on which the sun told the 

 hour, I undid my papers, and between twelve and 

 half-past busied myself with a sketch that I could 

 have also coloured, since it remained as clear as 

 lamplight, even on the hinder slopes of the mountains, 

 where the ambient glow beneficently scared all dark 

 and noisome shadows. Before I had completed my 

 task, a wild duck whizzed past my head like a 

 cannon-ball, and with a wilful quack plunged down 

 on tarn number five, from which a steam-cloud was 

 slowly wafting. My fingers had grown quite crude 

 and numb in the land air that had commenced to 

 breathe across from the snow-fields that lay like 

 a white pall on Sulitelma beyond the Saltren Fjord, 

 causing me to abandon melancholy communings, and 

 then for the space of two hours I distractedly paced 

 the mountain top. The sun was now quickly rising, 

 and its coppery disk emerging from the belt of sea-fog, 

 turned burnished and bright ; a whiter light was shed 

 around, and the birds chirped to business. Day came 

 with an icy chillness, so I delayed no longer, but 

 hastened down in leaps and jumps, and still, before I 

 reached the mountain foot, the sun was looking at me 

 curiously over the top. It was half-past five by the 

 church spire, and the hoarse-voiced village cocks 

 announced it with responsive crows, which, however 

 stentorian, failed to reach the big grey gull standing 

 in a drowse but a stone's throw from the shore ; or 

 the divers and mottley grebes who led certain 

 fledglings in review in and around between the home- 

 ward whispering, viking skiffs, with the coolness of 

 any well-behaved poultry. A nap being the order of 

 the day, I put up my boots on the seat at the hotel 

 door, and inhaled my share of impalpable sunbeams. 

 On the nth of July, the weather being propitious, 

 I got me up again into the mountains to see the mid- 

 night sun. As I passed through the birch scrub, 

 certain cries of u-tick, u-tkk, arrested me, which I 

 fairly mistook for the perspiring come-and-catch-me 

 of the Madonna del Pillone cicadre ; until a flash of 

 white and sable betrayed a confabulation of moth- 

 snapping whinchats {Saxicola ruhetra). On reaching 

 the bare spectacular summit, I undertook a nearer 

 scrutiny of the sparse mossy tufts, which revealed 

 plainly the operation of sun-power. Here, where 

 the birch had reclined to wrestle against the winter's 

 storm, and the mountain ash grew decrepitly like 

 a Chinaman's potling, the summer seedlings, vetch, 

 potentilla, and moss campion, delicately blossomed ; 

 and the bear-berries, blushed all over with their 

 carmine drupes acrid as a raw potato. When I 

 looked up, the sun had so considerably sunk down 

 as to bring a flush of rosy ribbons over the opposing 

 snow-fields of Sulitelma, which, however, before the 

 dead of night had, chamelion-like, died away. It 



was the first whisper of love in the weary northland, 

 a hue of the coming sunsets. Since the disk of the 

 sun was partly hidden behind the Lofoden mountains 

 its progress from peak to peak resembled the click of 

 a catch moving around a cog-wheel, and the ocular 

 impression was conveyed that the earth was turning 

 like a penny-go-round about the mountain top on 

 which I stood, so that, eventually, I fairly dreamt 

 that I was enthroned at the North Pole. Its low 

 course over about a ninth of the horizon being run, I 

 advisedly prevented the morning air by hastening 

 downwards ; my right of way among the cow-berries, 

 crow-berries and bear-berries red, being contested by 

 a mother grouse, who depressed her frill and ran her 

 circuits, while her chicks funnily bundled over an 

 opposing mound. Arrived at the hotel door I dis- 

 covered a belated damsel abroad, who, conscious of a 

 back entry, went round and turned the latch, a 

 matter that provoked a "what" from her fellow- 

 maidens. Well, perhaps, when solar physics is 

 better understood, the days may arrive when science 

 will erect her observatories on these northern heights, 

 and enlist the telegraph to flash us the news of the 

 universe ; while — 



" Pale suns unfelt in distance roll away. 

 And on the impassive ice the lightnings play." 



It was drawing towards midnight, and the footsteps 

 of Christina, Johanna, and Emelia, mounting the 

 staircase, had caused me to put up my window mat 

 to exclude the sunlight and court repose, when sud- 

 denly I was startled by such a booming of guns and a 

 cry of Keiser. I looked forth and saw a steamer 

 flaunting German colours float by in the refulgence 

 over to the northward. This was the tourist ship 

 Capella, carrying a concourse of Americans, English, 

 Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Italians, French, 

 Spaniards, Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians, to do the 

 honours to the Emperor of Germany, whom they 

 saluted in the Lyngenfjord the midnight of the 

 iS-iQth of July in the immediate proximity of the 

 midnight sun, testifying their thanks and well-wishes 

 to the captain and steward. From the programme 

 furnished by these luxurious and well-appointed 

 vessels, we gather that the sun remains above the 

 horizon at Tromso from the 19th of May until the 

 23rd of July, and at the North Cape a little longer, 

 from the nth of May until the 30th of July. At 

 Namsos, without the Arctic circle, it rises at the 

 earliest at about half-past one, while at Trondjhem 

 the midsummer nights remain so light that you can 

 enjoyably read a newspaper, brevier type and all, at 

 the witching hour. The sun disappears altogether at 

 the North Cape on the 19th of November to reappear 

 on the 24th of January, and meanwhile a dull light 

 like a London fog replaces the daylight. 



We had visited in the sweets of the morning the 

 Svartisen glacier, greenly shimmering in its echo- 

 fraught inlet, and wandered over its terminal high 



