rality. Colonel Skioldebrand is here obliged to exchange the active Finlanders, who had brought him through so many dangers by water, for as many indolent Laplanders, with whom he pursues his journey by land.

The first speech made by the chief of the party gives us some little insight into the natural manners of the tribe. The first glass of brandy warms the stomach, but the second warms the heart. The eternal clack, as he calls it, of his attendant, appears to have been extremely annoying to the Colonel, and at one time we find him forced by it, combined, indeed, with the attack of a host of mosquitos, to betake himself to the extraordinary occupation of shooting owls at midnight. He soon however arrives at the source of the river Alten, and is carried down the stream without any adventure worth notice, to the seaport of that name on the Frozen Ocean, situate about 800 miles from Torneo.

This coast is divided into Nordland and Finmark, which are separated by the course of the river Alten, and the former province still belongs to Denmark. The whole of Finmark also was originally claimed by this power, and the advances which the Russians and Swedes have made upon these distant possessions, are still considered by her as so many encroachments upon her natural rights.

The Russians, very early in the 14th century, crossed the White sea, and succeeded in establishing themselves in Candalax, and in fortifying Kola: they neglected, however, to take the same precaution at the more northern post of Wardhus, or the Norwegians would probably never have extended their territories so far as they were afterwards enabled to do. It was a favourite project of the Swedish king, Charles the IXth, who was alive to the advantages which belonged to the fisheries on these coasts, to extend his dominions in this direction, and he accordingly, by a treaty with the Czar of Muscovy, in 1596, obtained the cession of all that tract of country, in Finmark, over which the Russians had already extended their inroads. Extraordinary as it may appear, it was only by an accident, as it is stated by Von Buch, that the Danish king, Christian the IVth, discovered this arrangement. On examining the maps then recently published by the noted geographers Ortelius and Houdius, he found to his astonishment that Finmark, and a part of Nordland were separated by a strong boundary line from Norway, and distinguished by the same colour as Sweden. Ortelius was then called upon to explain the reasons for this singular delineation of the limits, who defended his geography by quoting the book from which it was taken, which proved to be a publication by a French officer, who had attended a Swedish general in the last war between

Russia and Sweden, and who was privy to the secret articles of the treaty Christian was not disposed tamely to submit to the spoliation of his dominions, or to suffer any insult on his authority to pass unnoticed: he immediately set out for Wardhus, the most distant establishment in this part of his territories, to assert bis rights, and to protest against the attempt to disturb them, and though he did not succeed in compelling the Russians to retire as they were required to do, from their new acquisition on the western coast of the White sea, he effectually counteracted the designs of Sweden.

Gustavus Adolphus was too much occupied in other quarters, to follow up his father's projects in this direction; he was easily prevailed upon therefore to renounce the claims which his predecessors had asserted to the whole of Finmark, and since that period the Kiolen mountains have always been considered the boundaries of Sweden. By the Peace of Fredericksham in 1809, the whole of Ostrobothnia was ceded to Russia, so that Finmark is no longer exposed to a similar danger from the Swedes. The people, however, are not likely to be gainers by the change of neighbours, for M. Von Buch apprehends that in a short time the Russians will acquire complete possession of Finmark, and compel the Norwegians to confine themselves to Nordland.

Finmark, according to Pontoppidan, contains 26,323 square English miles; the population, in 1801, did not exceed 7802. The inhabitants consist, according to Von Buch, of Laplanders, who in general gain their livelihood by fishing, of some Norwegian families, descendants of persons banished from their own country, and of Finlanders, who first made their appearance in the neighbourhood of Alten, about the year 1708, being driven northward by the wars of Charles XII. or by the havoc occasioned by the Russians among their flocks. The latter are said to be an industrious and agricultural people, and are designated by Von Buch under the name of Quaus, by which it appears the Finlanders were formerly known.

The Russians first began in 1742 to explore the shores of Finmark, and to catch or purchase fish on the coast. At particular periods we are told all the fiords and sounds are covered with small three-masted Russian vessels from Archangel; the trade which they now carry on without interruption, was contraband until the breaking up of the Finmark company, (in 1789,) which like other monopolies, was found to be prejudicial to the interests of the country. The Russians obtain fish for the raw commodities they bring, as well as permission to set lines on the coast; and it is curious to observe that the inhabitants of Finmark are taxed with a culpable disregard to their own interest, similar to that of which we

ourselves have been accused, by allowing foreigners to surpass them in activity, and neglecting to avail themselves of the riches which their coasts so abundantly afford.

Our readers will, perhaps, be curious to know, what hours are kept by a people, who have not the option of regulating their movements by those of the sun.

"The habits of life in these places during the summer, and especially when the sun continues above the horizon, are to rise at 10 o'clock in the morning, dine at 5 or 6 in the evening, sup an hour after midnight, and go to bed at 3 or 4 in the morning. In the winter, and during that long night which lasts from the beginning of December to the end of January, a sort of apathy congenial to the season creeps over the senses, and sleep occupies more than half of the twenty-four hours; when awake the inhabitants are principally employed in warming themselves, and business of most kinds is at a stand.'—Skioldebrand, p. 204.

Our traveller, after sufficiently recruiting his strength, procures a boat with four good rowers, to proceed by water to the North Cape, which is reckoned not more than seventeen Swedish miles distant from Alten; from motives of curiosity he occasionally put into some of the numerous fiords or inlets with which this coast abounds. The habits of the Laplanders who frequent the coast are totally distinct from those who rove about the interior. Fishing is their sole occupation, and few of them, as our author was informed by the clergyman, deposit their bones on shore, owing to the frequent accidents which occur to those who are engaged on these boisterous seas. The mountain Laplanders wander about the country, as the want of pasture or change of climate may require them to shift their quarters. They are entirely dependent upon their rein-deer for subsistence,and their herds sometimes amount to 3 or 4000. Ochter, whom we have before mentioned, described himself to king Alfred as 'a man of exceeding wealth, having 600 tame rein-deer of his own breed, besides 6 of a particular description, for the purpose of taking the wild deer, yet he had but 20 kine and 20 swine, and what land he had was tilled with horses.' Finmark appears at that time to have been considered as a tributary province, and the Laplanders as a people who were bound to deliver both to the lord of the country and his vassal, the skins, feathers, and furs which they had in their possession; for we find Ochter enumerating amongst his riches, 50 martin skins, a bear skin, 10 bundles of feathers, a bear skin coat, another of otter skin, and lastly two ships' cables of 60 ells long each, the one prepared from whale skin, and the other from the skin of the sea dog, as a yearly tribute from the richer Laplanders.' After threading a variety of islands, and doubling many promontories, Colonel Skioldebrand at last reaches Mageroe, the

island of which the North Cape forms the northern extremity, and at midnight gains a sight of this bold promontory. We shall not accompany him in his journey back to Torneo, as he retraced his steps by nearly the same route, and with much the same annoyance from cataracts and mosquitos.

We now turn to Norway, and it is incumbent upon us in the first place, to notice an author from whose travels we have already given several extracts. As we learn from a short biographical sketch attached to the translator's Preface, M.Von Buch is a Prussian of some eminence as a mineralogical writer. After visiting and describing some parts of his native country, and the south of Europe, a thirst after knowledge led him to undertake a journey to the north, and though his book is deficient in ornaments of style, like most of the German works on scientific subjects, it contains much valuable information relative to a line of coast which has seldom been explored by the geologist. The notes by Professor Jameson are rather sparingly scattered throughout the volume, but our readers will find in the preface a short enumeration by bin of the chief mineralogical facts, which Von Buch has noticed in this volume. Perhaps the most curious are his observations on the granite of Norway and Sweden; and his assertion that it is rarely to be met with in either country, will doubtless startle those who may have heard the Swedish monarch styled the king of the granite slab, in allusion to the thin layer of soil which covers the rocky surface of his dominions. The peculiar character, however, of the rock in question, has been already remarked by Hausman and others. In its primitive state it is certainly very rare both in Norway and Sweden, and gneiss is usually mistaken for it, as it has been in some of the islands on the west coast of Scotland. A transition granite occurs more frequently.

Little can be said of the merits of the translation. We are obliged to Mr. Black for bringing forward a work so deserving of attention; but either from carelessness, or ignorance of the German language, the sense of the author is, in some passages, barely discoverable.

The other work on Norway is by a French gentleman of the name of Lamotte, who travelled with Sir Thomas Acland, one of the members for Devon, in the year 1807.

The war between this country and Denmark broke out, most unluckily for them, whilst they were exploring the interior of Norway, and the Danes made no scruple of limiting the scientific pursuits of our travellers, to the immediate vicinity of an inland town, where they were compelled to remain as prisoners on parole. An Englishman at Verdun would be as well informed of what was passing in the other parts of France, as they could be at Königsberg of the state

of Norway, and it is to a previous excursion to Drontheim, and a visit to Stockholm after their release, that we are indebted for the volume before us.

Mr. Malthus, in his Essay on Population, has enlarged with an unusual degree of enthusiasm on the beauty of the Norwegian vallies, which we presume are those whose salubrity is so much extolled by Sir John Sinclair; and some letters of Mrs. Wolstonecroft, on the same subject, have been produced as specimens of successful description. As far as we can judge from Mr. Lamotte's account, the scenery of Norway bears a strong reseinblance to that of Switzerland, although in point of magnificence, its mountains and lakes must yield to those for which that picturesque country is so peculiarly distinguished. This opinion we have formed from the inspection of the plates with which M. Lamotte's book is enriched; they are from drawings by Sir Thomas Acland, and shew no common degree of taste in the selection of points of view adapted to the pencil: they are a very agreeable relief to the volume itself, which, to confess the truth, is but a slender performance.

There are so few modern works that afford any insight into the history of Norway, that we should have been glad if M. Lamotte had extended the first article in his Appendix on Norwegian antiquities to a greater length. Pontoppidan's History of Norway, which appeared in the middle of the last century, was composed, as he states, with a view to promote the glory of God, and though it contained much valuable information on subjects of natural history, we should say, that in some points it was not much calculated for the edification of man. The good archbishop's credulity far exceeds all reasonable bounds, and no accounts, however absurd, appear to stagger him, excepting an assertion of Adam Von Bremen, that in some parts of Norway the women are gifted with that inconvenient appendage, a beard. M. Lamotte, though he is willing to admit that Pontoppidan's stories are a little overcharged, is apparently a disciple of Guthrie, who has very gravely given the kraken and his attendant monster a place in his account of the natural productions of Norway; and, not to be behind hand with the compiler, quotes Pliny as an authority for the existence of a whale, which from its inordinate size, would confound the energies of the most intrepid harpooner of modern days: he argues, with some degree of fairness, that the recollection of the ridicule which was cast upon the accounts of Bruce and Le Vaillant ought to render us cautious in our disbelief since the appearance of the Hottentot Venus; and he might have added, since it has been discovered, that the practice of eating live beefsteaks, which for some time was consider