NORWAY. 



EXTENT AND SITUATION. 

 MHes. 



Length lloo? . C 58° 5' and 71° 0' north latitude. 



Breadth 150$ Detween £ 5° 10' and 25° 0' east longitude. 

 Containing 1 12,000 square miles, with six inhabitants to each. 



Name.. ..Norway signifies the Northern Way or country. It was 

 anciently called Norrike, or the Northern Kingdom. 



Boundaries and divisions. ...Norway is bounded on the south by 

 the entrance into the Baltic ; on the west and north by the Northern 

 Ocean ; and on the east it is divided from Sweden by a long chain of 

 mountains called at different parts by different names, as, Dofrefeld, 

 Fillefelcl, Runfeld, and Dourfcld. 



This extensive country is divided into the four governments, or 

 dioceses, of Aggerhuus, or Christiania, Christiansand, Bergen, and 

 Drontheim ; the latter is again subdivided into the two provinces of 

 Nordland, and Finmark, or Danish Lapland. 



Mountains, lakes, kivers... .Norway is one of the most mountain- 

 ous countries in tiie world ; a chain of unequal mountains runs through 

 it from south to north, to pass one of which, called the Ardanger, a 

 man must travel about seventy English miles ; and to pass others, 

 upwards of fifty. Dofrefeld is the highest of these mountains. The 

 rivers and cataracts which intersect those dreadful precipices, and 

 that are passable only by slight tottering wooden bridges, render 

 travelling in this country very terrible and dangerous ; though the 

 government is at the expense of providing, at different stages, houses 

 accommodated with fire, light, and kitchen furniture. Detached from 

 this vast chain, other immense mountains present themselves all over 

 Norway; some of them with reservoirs of water on the top, and the 

 whole forming a most stupendous landscape. The caverns that are 

 to be met with in these mountains are more wonderful than those, 

 perhaps, in any other part of the world, though less liable to observa- 

 tion. One of them, called Dolsteen, was in 1750 visited by two 

 clergymen, who reported, that they proceeded in it till they heard 

 the sea dashing over their heads ; that the passage was as wide and 

 as high as an ordinary church, the sides perpendicular, and the roof 

 vaulted ; that they descended a flight of natural stairs ; but when they 

 arrived at another, they durst not venture to proceed, but returned ; 

 and that they consumed two candles going and returning. In a moun- 

 tain in Nordland, called Torg Hallen, whose summit has been fan- 

 cifully imagined to resemble the figure of a giant with a hat on his 

 head, there is a vast pervious aperture a hundred yards high, and 

 above two thousand in length, along which a road runs. 



The lakes of Norway are extremely numerous ; the largest of them 

 is the Mioss, about sixty miles in length, but of no great breadth ex- 

 cept towards the centre, where it is from twelve to fifteen miles. It 

 has in it an island nearly ten miles in circumference. The lake of 

 Rands Sion, near the Mioss, is almost fifty miles long, but scarcely 

 moi*e than two broad. The lake of Fsemund is thirty-five miles long 

 and eight broad; and that of Ojeren, formed by the river Glom ; 



