ME 
HE steamer has passed the point of North Cape, 
and anchored in Hornvigen, a little bight on the 
Eastern side of the mountain, to allow the tourists 
the opportunity of ascending the northernmost 
outpost of Europe against the Arctic Ocean. We 
geo ashore, wade through plants, as high as a man, of the 
vigorous Mulgedium alpinum, Archangelica officinalis (‘* Kvanne ” =- 
Angelica), and an extremely luxuriant form of Scurvy-Grass 
(Cochlearia officinalis), which reaches above our knees ; we clamber 
up along the narrow cleft of the mountain in order to reach 
the plateau proper, which forms the termination of the Cape, 
before it topples over sheer down into the Arctic Ocean. We 
post ourselves on the slope facing the Arctic Ocean ; the time is 
between one and two at night; the sun’s red disk stands high 
above the horizon; the sea lies burnished like a looking-glass, 
and one seems to be able to see right up to the North Pole; but 
we cannot linger long—the ship is waiting for us down below. 
Still, we get just enough time to observe that even this 
desolate plateau has bird inhabitants. Besides the ubiquitous 
Wheatear—which is not wanting anywhere in our country, from 
the naked rocks of the coast and up on the mountains to the 
snow-line—we here come across a pair of Ringed Plovers 
(Af gialitis hiaticula), which run away, crying anxiously, among 
the small stones which cover the plateau like a floor; and, if 
we are lucky, we may discover the four down-covered young, 
which, like tiny grayish-brown lumps of down, lie flat among 
the gravel, where they remain motionless so long as the danger 
lasts. 
Should we have time for a longer excursion, we may,—in the 
