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THE MIDNIGHT SUN.
109
active and intelligent. There were no reindeer visible;
they were on the hills among the snows, where they
remain during the hot weather to escape the gnats that
infest the valley. I saw no food of any kind in the
huts. This colony is evidently accustomed to receive
visitors, for they brought out for sale spoons made of the
reindeer horn ; they asked half a dollar or three marks
each for them, and sold some at one mark each. Their
bargaining, and all their proceedings, are singularly
apathetic: they seem to have neither cupidity, curiosity,
civility, nor incivility, nor any kind of activity whatever,
and they are the most expressionless people I have ever
seen.
We left Tromsö at six in the evening. The scenery
of the coast is still very grand; and many glaciers are
visible. At last we had open sea to the north,
intercepted only by the picturesque island of Fuglö, or
" Fowl Island," and we saw the midnight sun. It was
higher than I expected, about four times its apparent
diameter above the horizon. At twelve o’clock it stood
over the island, which is about 2,500 feet high: it is
excessively difficult to believe that it is midnight. The
heat of the sun’s rays is very much diminished: we tried
to light cigars and paper with a lens, but failed, though
a few hours previously the experiment wTas successful
with the same lens. The band of golden glitter upon
the sea, stretching from the eye to the horizon beneath
the sun, is very beautiful; but the general effect of the
warm subdued light upon the scenery is not so fine as
when the sun itself is behind a range of hills.
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