A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 313 



fifteen years ago, and much of it has been rebuilt. Now 

 it has 3000 inhabitants, and churches of both Catholic 

 and Reformed Churches. It was the first city in Norway 

 to use electric lighting. Even in the dusk, we could see 

 the thin waterfalls — the so-called "white coals" of 

 Norway — from which the power is derived. Thirty 

 years ago you could probably have bought the strength 

 of all the streams in the country for ten shillings. 

 To-day you could not buy it for ten thousand times 

 that sum. The Norwegians — business-like race — are 

 thoroughly aware of the value of their waterfalls in the 

 future, when electric dynamos will supersede steam- 

 boilers as the world's motive power. 



We went ashore in the dusk, glad of the opportunity 

 to stretch our legs. The chief thing that struck us was 

 the absence of public-houses. There were only two in 

 the place, both of which were closed owing to the war, 

 Hammerfest does not publish a paper of its own, but 

 the news is telegraphed from the south, and then issued 

 in printed bulletins. We w^ere very jealous of the rest 

 of the crew, who could read these bulletins in their 

 entirety, whereas we had to put up with such scraps of 

 information as we could tease out of our acquaintance. 

 Accordingly we remembered a treat which we had 

 planned weeks before at Golchika, when a diet of fish, 

 bread, and tea was beginning to pall, and which we had 

 gloated over in anticipation during the voyage. We 

 walked shamelessly into a pastrycook's shop, and I do 

 not think that I have ever taken such an unholy delight 

 in tarts since my schooldays, when we held night orgies 

 in the bathroom with biscuits and chocolate, 



