Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/214

178 in hulk. The slow and eternal descent of these hard fields of ice crushes the rocks beneath, and the glacier water, therefore, is mingled with powdered rocks and is whiter than the blue sea-water. It rained the whole afternoon, but the scene before us was so beautiful, so varied and continually changing, and so lovely with its sublime rocks, its beautiful sparkling waterfalls and its fine glaciers, that we gazed on it eagerly during the whole time we were in the fiord, unwearied, unsatiated. We came out to the sea about 11 and we went to bed after midnight which I need hardly repeat was still light as day.

31st July. We were in Tromso early in the morning and found that the photographers who had taken us at the Lapp encampment a few days ago had brought printed copies of the photograph. Everybody on board bought them, and all the copies brought were soon sold off. Leaving Tromso we steamed the whole day through sheltered creeks, and as we came southwards we saw farms and houses and cultivated fields again. Our whole way seemed to lie through one long continuous lake with fine wooded hills on both sides of us and little clusters of houses at the foot of the hills here and there. In the afternoon we came near the charming Lofoden Isles again, and steamed down leaving those islands to our right and the mainland to our left. I cannot describe how lovely those islands looked in the rays of the setting sun. Some of the peaks which caught the rays of the sun shone like molten gold, while a soft blue color shaded and beautified the entire range