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nearer the sea, is a long flat marsh, between high, rounded cliffs ; and 

 there these mountaineers, floating on to be sawn up, form themselves 

 into a solemn funeral procession which extends for miles ; and it may 

 be noticed that the course of this stream of floats is always longer than 

 the course of the river's bed ; for the water is slowly swinging from 

 side to side as it flows, and the floats show the course of the stream 

 and its whirling eddies." 



The Hailing dance referred to is a Norwegian dance, reminding 

 one at once of the sailors' hornpipe and the Highland fling, but still 

 more vigourous and exhausting to the dancer, being diversified with 

 somersaults such as are here alluded to. 



On my return to Christiansand in the evening I at once took pos- 

 session of my berth on board the steamer, which, like others in which 

 I have sailed on these northern seas, was more luxurious in its arrange- 

 ments than are those in many of the sea-going steamers on the 

 British coast. 



We sailed at three o'clock in the morning, and from that time 

 till near nine o'clock in the evening, with the exception of about 

 an hour and a half in the middle of the day when we left the coast, 

 we were the whole way sailing onwards among islands, rounding them 

 and passing them as if on a pleasure trip there being always rocks 

 to seaward to break the roll of the waves, and secure for us placid 

 waters, and looking in on every village on the coast, while breakfast, 

 dinner, and supper were served with all the northern whets and 

 appetisers of which many a one has heard. 



Steamers from Britain to Christiania generally avoid the coast, so 

 that this sight is lost until they enter the Fiord. Such as is the 

 Fiord, such was the whole course, with the trifling exception of the 

 hour and a half spoken of. I was reminded of a voyage through the 

 Thousand Isles of Lake Ontario ; but the scene was different. Here 

 the islands are rocks, but not rocks rough and rugged rocks of 

 granite planed down and smoothed by glacial action, more like clean 

 and white and sparkling banks of mud than are rocks on a sea-girt 

 shore. It required no effort and but little fancy to picture them as 

 an ocean bed rising above the sea, when, according to the Hebrew 

 cosmogony, God said, " Let the waters under the heavens be gathered 

 together, and let the dry land appear." And again, " Let the earth 

 bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding 

 fruit after his kind : and it was so." 



There, were the bare, rounded granite rocks, without a blade of 

 vegetation ; there, were others with only a lichen, or a moss or a 

 grassy, or flowery green spot. The former was on the dry rock, the latter 

 on any crack or hollowed basin; and there, where there was a wider rent 



