Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/429

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almost above them, and the sun floods the skies with pink and purple hues, painting also the low-lying bars of cloud with gold, to be itself slowly, slowly, quenched in a roseate ocean. And still the alpine glow bathed all the scene with opalescent reds, with violet colorings and russet lines, while the shadows of the higher peaks lay black upon the snows of the valleys below them. The picture remained perfect for an hour, its high lights shifting, but its beauty penetrating and immanent, spreading all over the solemn austere hills with changing marvelousness.

In the morning we found ourselves at the bottom of a fiord at the head of which we confronted an extensive marsh. This was Akreyri, a good-sized place, running around a curved shore with large frame houses, some three stories high, and a good road along the shore and up into the hills. About a quarter of a mile from the landing dock there is a deep till morainal deposit, packed with rounded pebbles, and prevalent evidence of an old beach line. Back of the shore on the village side rose sculptured snow mountains, and opposite across the fiord the long slant of a hill dissected by rill channels. This hill was the