A LAND OF PERPETUAL SUNLIGHT.
Some of the roads on which we traveled here are cut directly through the mountains. We found such tunnels quite agreeable, since they furnished the only genuine darkness to be found. So far as light is concerned, one may drive through Norway in the summer just as well by night as by day. Early and late indeed are words which in this region grow meaningless. I could not keep a diary in Norway, so difficult was it to tell when yesterday ended and to-day began. At first this seemed a great economy of time. We felt that we were getting some advantage over Mother Nature. "Why not drive on another twenty miles?" we asked; "we can enjoy the scenery just as well;" or, "Why not write a few letters now? It is still light. In fact, why go to bed at all?" But after a time this everlasting daylight grew a trifle wearisome. It thoroughly demoralized both our brains and our stomachs, from the unheard of hours it occasioned for eating and sleeping. Steamers will start in Norway at five o'clock in the morning, or even at midnight. I once sat down to a table d'hôte dinner at half-past nine, and on another occasion ate a lunch in broad daylight at two o'clock in the morning. Moreover, even when we went to bed the sun's rays stole between our eyelids, and dispelled that darkness which induces slumber. For, strangely enough, there are rarely any blinds or shutters to Norwegian windows. Only a thin, white curtain screened us usually from the glare of day. After a while, therefore, I could sympathize with an American lady, whom I heard exclaim, "O, I would give anything for a good, pitch-dark night twenty-four hours long!"
NORWEGIAN BOULDERS.
DISINTEGRATED MOUNTAINS.
