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146 THROUGH NORWAY WITII A KNAPSACK.
as high as the prow itself. The odour of such a fleet is
most remarkable: I was sleeping as we approached
them, and the smell awakened me long before we
reached the outermost vessel. They are rigged with
one large square mainsail and a very dumpy topsail
over that. They cannot be much addicted to high
speed, but appear quite indifferent to any amount of
sea; and if they struck upon a rock would probably
rebound and go 011 ahead as though nothing unusual
had happened. The vessels of the old sea-kings were
doubtless such as these: in ships of scarcely greater
tonnage, held together by wooden bolts, without
chronometers, quadrants, or even a compass, they crossed the
Atlantic, discovered and traded with America, and
colonized Greenland more than three hundred years
before Columbus was born.
On the fifth day of our return journey we passed
Torghatten, and saw the sunset at about eleven o’clock,
with all the grandeurs before alluded to. These
glowing night effects are far finer when the sun sets at about
eleven or half-past, than when it remains above the
horizon altogether.
The daylight was the subject of a controversy almost
as animated as that on Scandinavian versus Latin. I
had observed that a perceptible change took place in the
character of the light after midnight; that although the
altitude of the sun is the same ten minutes before twelve
as ten minutes after, and the amount of light probably
the same, there is a perceptible difference in its character
as regards tone and colour: the usual difference between
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