53 



couple of days, towards eight o'clock one evening, first beheld 

 that great rock called the North Cape of Norway. 



North Cape 



It seemed like being in the tropics to see such a luxuriant 

 growth of grass, butter-cups, geraniums, sweet yellow vrolets, 

 pink campion, saxifrages, etc., as were wild in the somewhat shel- 

 tered valley up which the exceedingly steep path zigzagged to 

 the flat top of the great cliff. But the first steps on the wind- 

 swept stony summit were as devoid of plants as the plains of Ice- 

 land had been. Walking to the very edge we looked off to the 

 sun just at its lowest point for that night, it being then twelve 

 o'clock, and proved the photographer's warning useless in this 

 instance for we could take pictures when the sun was just at set- 

 ting or rising. From this height of about 900 ft. there was a 

 fine view of the other bays and headlands, only less tremendous 

 than the one we were on, of which the coast is composed. 



In the Lyngenfiord still well to the north of the Arctic Circle, 

 we spied our first trees, white birches, and many other flowers ; 

 and here too we visited the Laplanders in their summer camp 

 in a beautiful valley within sight of a fine glacier. At Diger- 

 mulen on the Lofoten Islands we climbed a mountain about 

 1,100 ft. high to get a view of many fiords and islands and snowy 

 summits, and on the way up noticed the following plants : Cal- 

 luma vulgaris, white heather or lyng, which is supposed to have 

 suggested the name of the Lyngenfiord, violets, Cornus suecicia, 

 Lotus covTiiculatus, which I had last seen in bloom on the South 

 Downs of Sussex in early June, Trientalis Europoea, Vaccinium, 

 Vitis idaea, Andromeda polyfolia, very fresh pretty pink, Rubus 

 chatnaemorus, and dwarfed willows, and Bettda nana, also many 

 mosses and ferns. 



I will make no attempt to enumerate the flowers in the re- 

 maining places we visited, because they were too many and are 

 well known to anyone familiar with the European flora or even 

 with the English country at this season of the year, but must 

 mention two places we stopped at because of their surpassing 

 beauty. Merok is at the end of the very narrow Geirangerfiord 



