80 THE ROCK OF SVCERHOLT. 



the precious woods of the Amazon and the 

 Orinoco ! . . 



" On issuing from the strait we turned south- 

 ward into the great Porsanger Fjord, which 

 stretches nearly a hundred miles into the heart of 

 Lapland, dividing Western from Eastern Finmark. 

 Its shores are high monotonous hills, half covered 

 with snow, and harren of vegetation, except 

 patches of grass and moss. If once wooded, like 

 the hills of the Alten Fjord, the trees have long 

 since disappeared, and now nothing can be more 

 bleak and desolate. Running along the eastern 

 shore, we exchanged the dreadful monotony through 

 which we had been sailing for more rugged and 

 picturesque scenery. Before us rose a wall of 

 dark cliff, from five to six hundred feet in height, 

 gaping here and there with sharp clefts or 

 gashes, as if it had cracked in cooling, after the 

 primeval fires. As we approached the end 

 of the promontory which divides the Porsanger 

 from the Laxe Fjord, the rocks became more ab- 

 rupt and violently shattered. Huge masses, fallen 

 from the summit, lined the base of the precipice, 

 which was hollowed into cavernous arches, the 

 home of myriads of seagulls. The rock of Svoer- 

 holt, off the point, resembled a massive fortress in 

 ruins. Its walls of smooth masonry rested on three 

 enormous vaults, the piers of which were but- 



