The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-10-29

/ vsIsito ailinC communicates in lonely
I COastwise parishes; and scores more from
many lands and climes in astonishing va
riety of nationality, station and charac-
/ ter; but all in the grandest good humor
and cheerily alive to the mutual gains
/ from commonalty and good fellowship.
/ Itis only the fringe of Norway that can
/ be thus threaded bit by Bit, but what a
mighty fringe it is Did the reader ever
I think for a moment what the actual coast
/ OF Norway must be2 The subject came
| up on shipbolrd. and some people capable
/ of close calculation, and who think be-
/ fore they venture opinions, conceded 1t
might be from 1900 10 5000 miles My
curiosity led me tie speak 10 the captain
about il when opportunity offered.
"Well,n he replied cautiously, THE
same question has been repeatedly asked
me ever since | have been in the coast
Service. The main coast line is upward
of l,20O miles long There are nearly
600 islands in the 'Skj9rgaard' (ouJer
coast-prouecting islands) with full 1900
miles of coast line, from Bukken tlOrd TO
the North Cape and around TO Wdranger
Ford, in the Arctic ocean. The tiords
cutting into main land, some eighty TO
100 miles in length, each with smaller
iiOrds, some shorter. some longer, reach
ing in every direction from the larger
fords, must have as great coast
line as the 'Skjargaard' We don't
know as we are right; but we have never
been able to figure NOrway's actual coast
line at below 1900 miles"
That is nearly one-third the distance
around the globe. In This summer time
trip along the Norway coast-for there is
practically no night in June and July
The travellers sight may fairly be said to
rest upon coast scenery onehalf the
length Of this vast distance. The entire
course is one of eyer-changing scenes Of
deselafiOn and grandeur, quaintness and
beauty Nothing could be quainter in the
Netherlands than the red tiled city of
Bergen which the good King Olaf founded,
reaching out to commerce and the sea its
long low rows of huge rooted warehouses,
its peaked roofs and gable ends, all climb
ing the steep hills and forming a warm,
almost Flemish picture against the hard
old mountains behind.
In a moment almost it is shut from
sight, and then the interminable maize of
islands again. Now we are at the very
edge of one whose Vcrd ureless top and
ragged teeth could be leaped upon from
shipboard. Then a little archipela 0 is
threaded where folk live by fishing and
farming; the nets and gear lining the
rugged shores; tiny strips of grass or
grain showing here and there between
black angles of rock; and low, strongly
built habiCatiOns often with sod roofs,
are clustered wherever place to set them
can be found. Here men, women and
children are barefooted bare-legged,
bare-breasted and bare-armed. They
seem content. and as we pass they wave
their hands and smile.
More than once we pass through chan
nels so narrow between appraised faces Of
island walls that it is shadowy and dark
upon the steamers deck Myriads Of sea-
fowl dip and plunge a US, as if to descend
upon the ship, and Shrek deafeningly for
the mOmentary intrusion. Some are
gulls, with their hoarse, strangled gurgle;
and men and women standing aft against
the sail excitedly throw pieces of bread
for the famished fowls to wrangle over in
mid-air, laying wagers as to the greatest
numbers of throws" taken by the gulls
before the bread touches the water; the
sport often awakening almost bitter
rvalries and becoming dangerous topurse
and person. Again we sail close beneath
a beetling shore-side cliff whose leaden-
colored wall rises sheer into the air for
more than 1000 feet and whose edge cuts
the sky above apparently as level and
sharp as the edge Of dressed block of
black marble. Seward, countless islets
trimmed with foam form purple reliefs in
settings of spotless white.
Countless fords are passed. Some have
low-lying mouths Others show close,
black walls reaching to the clouds.
Through the latter u sheen of light car
ries the eye to the purply, almost shad-
Owy haze above the soundless waters be-
Meath; and so far as can De seen there are
here, but the waters beneath the mighty
encfrcling walls and then the clouds and
the armament above. But through many,
most tantaliing glimpses are caught.
Strange, pointed boats are plying across
the silent waters of the ford A village
seeming to rest upon the water itself
shows beneath the face of a towering
elm. An upland dal entrance is indi-
Gated by the pinlIish mist which, show
ing above the ford edge, hints of deep,
swift streams of slumberous, silent lakes
beyond, with pleasant valley life around. A
grea6 stone road winds in and out like
some huge scalY serpent, but always up
ward. Upon its outward reappearing
curves tiny chalets seem poised. Far in
some faintly-seen pockety recess is a tint
of green. The red and brown splotches
upon it are mountain-side peasant homes
That puff of white like a mammoth fleece
of wool, ten. twenty, perhaps thirty miles
away, is where a river leaps from an in
discernible gorge. A thousand feet
higher, but nearer on the ford side, is a
penciling of wavering white-a waterfall
pounded by the hundreds of feet before
they touch the rippleless ford where they
ldll AbONC anu UtlOW oil lUlS, Ul6lullg
into distinguished threads and lines of
sky and cloud, are ranges of eternal ice
and snow.
And so, on and on and almost endlessly
on, challenged by these strange wild and
beautiful scenes, you may go tirelessly,
habitation, comfort and pleasant COM
Partnerships, all yours; past sturdy old
Throudhjem, the nOrthernmost city of
Importance in Europe, with the wild and
racing Mid, tearing and bounding from
the mountains in majestic waterfalls,
outlining its curious almost island site,
and its crumbling old cathedral towering
above its red roofs and peaked gables /;
past Bodo with it's sod-roof huts and
barn-like modern buildings; past Tor
gh8ttau with its world famous rocky
tunnel; past the marvellous "bird-moun-
tain, y SvRrhOlt, strange, weird perpen-
| dicular prOmontory of clay slate where
millions of white sea-fowl cluster like
wrea his and strings OF pearls past the
far north LofOden Islands around which
huddle countless Norwegian fishing
smacks, and where more than twenty
million of cod are annually taken; round
the bleak, black, drear and dreadful
North Cape, its messy back strangely
lighted by the yellow light of the north
ern sun; and finally sweeping past meas
ureless nights of brown, bare stone, ever
backed by glacier fields untrodden by
fOot of man, and the vast mouths OF Por-
IN