chap, ii THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 23 



then mass and hurry and might with the stillness from 

 which they emerge, that impresses the beholder. As the con- 

 trast is forgotten the effect diminishes. Always arrange to 

 come suddenly on cataracts. 



A road led from the restaurant. We elected to follow 

 the river-bank, to which a track invited us. It ended in a 

 swampy wood, through which we urged a laborious way, 

 sinking ankle-deep in mud, whilst wet branches hit us on 

 the face. Climbing a hill we came to drier places, then to 

 a real path, and then a road. Five miles' plodding brought 

 us to the ship about eleven o'clock in the so-called night. 



Early one morning we steamed away to the neighbour- 

 ing Orkedalsoren to pick up the materials for the Spitsbergen 

 inn. Here is one of the largest timber works of Norway, 

 where the hillside harvests of the woods are gathered and 

 wrought into every form. You can buy a ready-made house 

 as easily here as a wooden trunk. The building was all 

 ready, was in fact standing in the yard, its two storeys 

 in separate places. To pull it to pieces, load it on trucks, 

 and run them along the railway and the wooden pier to 

 the steamer, was not half-a-day's work. In a few hours we 

 sailed again. 



The scenery continued dull — rounded rock-islands under 

 a roof of fog, which hid all bolder prominences. But late 

 in the evening it improved, and we had one lovely view when 

 we gathered on deck in our warmest wraps. The cold air 

 was utterly clear. A long mountain outline, finely complex, 

 divided a purple range of hills, that looked flat in their re- 

 moteness like a wall, from a band of sky, yellow with 

 radiance poured level from the lowering sun, whose wake 

 upon the calm water of the sound was broken by the dark 

 silhouette of an anchored schooner. Little, however, in a 

 general way, cared we for weather or scenery, for there was 

 enough to do with our things and with one another. I read 



