The next day we continued the descent. The day before we had come to the zone where the juniper grew; to-day we passed the birch. Then came the fir trees. Darkness overtook us, and I could not make out what sort of land it was, but soon we came to the house of a fisherman, where we all spent the night.
When I awoke in the morning and looked out I found that I was at the bottom of a great chasm with towering mountains on each side. I had never seen the like. It seemed to me that I had come to a world unknown before. Looking towards the west I saw a long dark green line of water, sunk deeply into the ragged and precipitous mountains. I had come to the Ulf Fjord. The water was the Arctic Sea. I was on the shores of grand old Norway.
The fjord was frozen at its inner extremity for about one mile with thick solid ice. At the inner end of every fjord there is a river, flowing through a valley, which is the continuation of the fjord; consequently the water is only brackish and freezes more easily than salt water. Further on the fjord is free of ice, for in this part of the world, though so far north, the sea is made warm by the Gulf Stream, the very same Gulf Stream that starts from West Africa and flows westward to the coast of Brazil, then branches off northward and runs close to our American shores. Without the Gulf Stream this part of Norway would be a land of ice, just as the land of North-west America is, in the same latitude.
I remembered that I had sailed over the Gulf Stream waters near the African coast, and it had come to meet the same stream again on that far-away northern shore—beyond the Arctic Circle.
My journey over mountains 5,000 feet high, between the 69th and 70th degrees of north latitude, was over.
I saw a vessel in the distance, and with one of the fishermen living on this inhospitable shore we went on board. It was good luck the vessel was going to sail north. The captain was willing to take me with him on his voyage.
I thanked John and my other travelling companions for the kindness they had shown me. We parted with great tokens of friendship.