342 THE LIFE OF JAMES D. FORBES. [CHAP. 



of the scenery was so like that of the Scotch Highlands, 

 that I could hardly persuade myself that I was not in 

 Inverness-shire. I was greatly tempted to explore the 

 fiords between Alten and Tromso, which abound in true 

 glaciers, mentioned by scarcely any writer, and evidently 

 of the utmost geological interest. The vast interstrati- 

 fication of limestone and gneiss remind one of the Alps, 

 while the hypersthene formation here and there breaking 

 through, reproduces the very forms of the Cuchullin hills 

 in Skye. The necessity of returning to Bergen in time 

 for the eclipse, has prevented me from doing more than 

 noting the phenomena as I saw them from the deck of 

 the steamer, and I made careful drawings (some at 

 midnight ! ) of the glaciers, which evidently differ in 

 no essential particular from those of Switzerland. After 

 a return voyage of 1,500 miles I reached Bergen, and 

 soon found that its proverbial bad character for weather 

 was richly deserved/ 



1 ' The climate of Bergen is notoriously the most rainy 

 in Norway. Its humidity is a standing joke against the 

 "Bergenser," of whose wardrobe a greatcoat and um- 

 brella are alleged to be, even in the height of Summer, 

 the most important part. ... It may be thought indeed 

 unwise that I should have staked my second chance of 

 seeing this great phenomenon (having been already disap- 

 pointed at Turin in 1842), by fixing upon a place of such 

 ill fame in point of climate. . . . But I was unable to 

 resist the opportunity of obtaining a sight of the Arctic 

 regions and perpetual day, to which may be added the 

 desirableness of observers being distributed along all parts 

 of the space of total darkness, as well for the chances of 

 weather as for other reasons. 



' No good fortune attended me at Bergen. I was con- 

 soled for the disappointment, as far as possible, by the 

 unaffected kindness and sympathy of my friends tli 

 who, with truly Norwegian courtesy, seemed to feel 

 much more on account of a stranger who had travelled 



1 The following descriptions are condensed from Forbes's c Norway 

 and iis Glacier^,' published in 1853. 



