3260 General Observations on Norway. 



the first, its rivers, streams and lakes for the second, and the whole 

 country for the two last : its forests almost boundless ; its fjelds and 

 fjords peculiar to itself, and containing points of exceeding beauty 

 as well as of majestic grandeur and savage wildness; its rivers and 

 streams leading the angler into the most bold and glorious scenery ; 

 its lakes deep, clear, and presenting every variety of landscape, from 

 the cold, silent, sequestered, ice-bound mountain tarn, to the sunny, 

 smiling, fertile lake of the valley, w r hose banks are clothed with ver- 

 dure to the water's edge. And I purpose to enter into a somewhat 

 fuller account of these fjelds and fjords, forests and lakes, than per- 

 haps at first sight seems fitting in a journal devoted to the zoological 

 part of Natural History, (I say at first sight, for, on consideration, the 

 ' Zoologist' professes to record facts relating, among other things, to 

 the retreats of the animals of which it speaks) ; and I do so, because 

 it may serve to elucidate the notes 1 have written above, and to show 

 how well fitted by nature is Norway for offering a safe and undisturbed 

 retreat to many quadrupeds, which in all other parts of Europe have 

 been long since extinct, and also to those countless multitudes of birds 

 which resort thither annually to breed ; and I hope that a somewhat 

 detailed account of the country, thinly peopled as it is, and presenting 

 such attractions to the naturalist and sportsman, may induce others, 

 brother-naturalists, equally able to enjoy the delights, and better able 

 to note and relate their observations, to explore its little-known wilds, 

 and ramble amidst its most magnificent scenery. 



Norway appears to be one vast rock, about one thousand miles in 

 length, and ranging from fifty to two hundred miles in breadth ; jut- 

 ting up in all directions in numberless peaks and in long ridges, and 

 so forming the strange, sharp mountains, and narrow, deep valleys, of 

 which it is composed. These ridges, where they do not abruptly ter- 

 minate in a gorge, run across the country for very many miles, forming 

 back-bones (as it were) to the long expanse of mountains stretching 

 on either side ; and here are those immense tracts of wild, desert, 

 uninhabitable, uncultivated land, the famous fjelds, whose chief deni- 

 zens are the ptarmigan and the golden plover, the reindeer, the lem- 

 ming, and the ermine, This great rock is pierced in all directions on 

 its southern and western sides, by narrow but long arms of the sea, 

 which run into it, and split its edges into the most fantastic forms, and 

 some of these rents extend inland for a hundred miles. The walls of 

 rock which inclose these arms of the sea, frequently rise almost per- 

 pendicularly to a vast height^ and in the event of a sudden squall (no 

 uncommon lliing here), render it quite impossible lor the hapless boat- 



