The Island Belt 7 



things belong to our ordinary experiences of a moun- 

 tainous country, and at any rate the traveller who has 

 been in Switzerland will be familiar enough with them; 

 familiar, too, in some degree with the torrents and the 

 waterfalls, from the sound of which, after his full entry 

 into Norway, the traveller's ears will, perhaps for days 

 or weeks, be never free ; and familiar with the wonder- 

 ful beauty- and variety of the ferns and flowers which 

 he finds among all this grandeur. These things, I say, 

 are common to Switzerland and Norwav, as more or 

 less to all mountain regions. IS'orway and Switzerland, 

 in fact, always associate themselves in the mind as two 

 countries essentially similar in scenery, whose flora are 

 closely allied, and so forth. 



But there are other features of I^Torwegian scenery 

 peculiar to that Switzerland of the north, that Switzer- 

 land by the sea. 



The first of these which the traveller in his supposed 

 tour catches sight of is the belt of islands which lies 

 between the mainland and the ocean. On his way into 

 Bergen, for example, or into Stavanger, he will first 

 pass for some hours among these rocky islands. They 

 are of various size^ and of various elevations ; but they 

 share the same general character. They have much 

 the same general look that rocks have which have been 

 worn down by long detrition of the sea, only in the 

 case of these islands it is not water which has robbed 

 them of all their sharp angles, as we shall see presently. 

 Similar islands may be found off the western coast of 

 Scotland, and they are not infrequent off the west 

 coast of Ireland, but no other land of Europe has such 

 a continuous belt of islands as has Norway. This is 



