way. He pretended to be capable of giving direct and positive orders (without an intermediary) to each of the 13 separate corps. What incoherence, what repeated waste of time, what orders and counterorders resulted therefrom in this short campaign, so disastrous to Austria! And what a contrast with the dispositions made at Berlin! There 3 armies, that is to say, only 3 units, received orders emanating from the royal head quarters; each of the commanders of armies maintaining every freedom of execution, and only having to regulate the movements of 4 or 5 units or corps d'armée. All was simple and logical. Extraordinary fact! Austria in 1859 and 1866 commits two faults, the one contrary to the other. In 1859 she forms two separate armies, which is undoubtedly one of the worst possible dispositions, as it furnishes neither wings nor centre without disjointing great commands. On the other hand, she adopts in 1866 a yet more pernicious principle, that of 13 separate units, devoid of communication. Do not such things show forth clearly the superior intelligence of the Prussian over the Austrian army ?-for if in the latter service the officers of rank ignore the essential principles of war, such as the Great Captain delighted to publish in his Memoirs, what can one expect of officers in subordinate positions ? As is evident, all that I have said upon the Prussian army, and particularly upon its superiority over the Austrian, is but the clearest result of the study of facts, combined with that of the character and institutions of the two peoples. I defy any officer who would wish to compare and to think out the matter not to be struck with it. He must recognise in the Prussian army, which contains the intelli gence and the moral power of the whole nation, first the peculiar qualities of the North German race, its energy, its audacity, its discipline, its sense of duty and of dignity; then its unitedness, its education, its skill in manoeuvring, its excellent armament, its staff corps (the best educated in Europe), the warlike capacity which study and application develop in its officers; all things which are not met with, or are met with in a minor degree, in the Austrian army. It is almost needless to add, that the military events of the year 1866 have but added to the sentiment in the Prussian army of its own value; but long before this time nothing was omitted which was calculated to give the army confidence in itself, to cause it to be honoured, to surround it with every possible consideration. All favours are reserved for it, and everything tends to give it, in the eyes of the nation and in public opinion, the character of a fundamental institution-I was almost saying of a sacred institution; for there is no military musical air, not even the Retreat,' which is totally devoid of a religious character; and during Divine service it is first for the King and his army that the minister invokes the blessing of the Most High; the great legislative bodies of the State are only subsequently cited. And this fact which I have just stated is followed with that calm dignity, with those sentiments of strong conviction, which so essentially characterise this serious and energetic people, whose territory stretches from the Vistula to the Rhine. What a contrast with the situation of the army in France, which is nothing but a conglomeration of fortune-forsaken men, among whom discipline and military spirit decline more and more! BERLIN: July 22, 1868. A THE LOFODEN ISLANDS. BY EDMUND W. GOSSE. MONG the thousands who throng to the Continent for refreshment and adventure, how few leave the great southwardstreaming mass, and seek the desolate grandeur of those countries which lie north of our own land! Of those who do diverge, the great majority are sportsmen, bent on pitiless raids against salmon and grouse. It is strange that the noblest coast-scenery in Europe should be practically unknown to so ubiquitous a people as we are: but so it is; and as long as the thirst for summer climates remains in us, the world's winter-garden will be little visited. It is the old story: the Northmen yearn after the Nibelungen treasure in the South. Doubtless, for us who are supposed to shiver in perennial fog, this tropical idolatry is right and wise. With all the passion of Rosicrucian philosophers we wor ship the unfamiliar Sun-god, and transport ourselves to Italy or Egypt to find him. But what if he have a hyperborean shrine-a place of fleeting visit in the far North, where for awhile he never forsakes the heavens, but in serene beauty gathers his cloud-robes hourly about him, and is lord of midnight as of midday? Shall we not seek him there, and be rewarded perchance by such epiphanies of violet and scarlet and dim green, of scathing white light and deepest purple shadow, as his languorous votaries of the South know nothing of? With such persuasive hints I would lead the reader to the subject of this paper. I imagine to most minds the Lofoden Islands are associated with little except schoolbook legends of the Maelström, and, perhaps, the undesirable savour of cod-liver oil. With some they have a shadowy suggestion of iron bound rocks, full of danger and horror, repulsive and sterile, and past the limit of civilisation. So little has been written about them, and that little is so inadequate, that I cannot wonder at the indifference to their existence which prevails. With the exception of a valuable paper by Mr. Bonney, that appeared some time back in the Alpine Journal, I know of no contribution to geographical literature which treats of the group in any detail; and that paper, both from the narrow circulation of the periodical, and also from the limited district of which it treats, cannot have had that influence which its merit and the subject deserve. The Lofoden Islands, which I visited this summer, are an archipelago lying off the Arctic coast of Norway. Although in the same latitude as Central Greenland, Siberia, and Boothia Felix, they enjoy, in common with all the outer coast of Scandinavia, a comparatively mild climate: even in the severest winters their harbours are not frozen. The group extends at an acute angle to the mainland for about 140 miles, north-east and south-west. In shape they seem on the map like a great wedge thrust out into the Atlantic, the point being the desolate rock of Röst, the most southerly of the islands: but this wedge is not solid; the centre is occupied by a sea-lake, which communicates by many channels with the ocean. As all the islands are mountainous, and of most fantastic forms, it can be imagined that this peculiar conformation leads to an endless panorama of singular and eccentric views. The largest of the Lofodens is Hindöe, which forms the base of the wedge; north of this runs the long oval isle of Andöe; to the west lies Langöe, whose rugged coast has been torn and fretted by the ocean into the most intricate confusion of outline; the central lake has for its centre Ulvöe-thus the heart of the whole group; and from the south of Hindöe run in succession towards the south-west, Ost Vaagöe, Vest Vaagöc, Flakstadöe, Moskenæsöe, Væröe, and little ultimate Röst. All these, and several minor satellites also, are inhabited by scattered families of fishermen. There is no town, scarcely a village; it is but a scanty population so barren and wild a land will support. But quiet and noiseless as the shores are when the traveller sees them in their summer rest, they are busy enough, and full of all energy and animation, in the months of March and April. As soon as the tedious sunless winter has passed away, the peculiar Norwegian boats, standing high in the water, with prow and stern alike curved upwards, begin to crowd into the Lofoden harbours from all parts of the vast Scandinavian coast. It is the never-failing harvest of codfish that they seek. Year after year, in the early spring, usually about February, the waters around these islands are darkened with innumerable multitudes of cod. They are unaccountably local in these visitations. I was assured they had been never known to extend farther south than Væröc, at the extremity of the group. The number of boats collected has been estimated at 3,000; and as each contains on an average five men, the population of the Lofodens in March must be very considerable. Unfortunately for these toilers of the sea,' the early spring is a season of stormy weather and tumultuous seas: when the wind is blowing from the northwest or from the south-west, they are especially exposed to danger; when in the former quarter the sudden gusts down the narrow channels are overwhelming, and when in the latter the waves are beaten against the violent current always rushing down the Vest Fjord from its narrow apex. The centre of the busy trade in fish is Henningsvær, a little collection of huts perched on the rocks under the precipitous flanks of Vaagekallen, the great mountain of Ost Vaagöe. I was told that in April, when the fish is all brought to shore, and the operations of gutting and cleaning begin, the scene on the shore becomes more strange than delightful. The disgusting labours which complete the great herringseason in our own Hebrides are utterly outdone by the Norsk cod-fishers. Men, women, and children cluster on the shore, busily engaged in their filthy work, and steeped to the eyes in blood and scales and entrails: at last the rocks themselves are slippery with the reeking refuse; one can scarcely walk among it; and such a smell arises as it would defy the rest of Europe to equal. The fish is then spread on the rocks to dry, and eventually piled in stacks along the shore: in this state it is known as klip-fish. Some is split and fastened by pegs to long rods, and allowed to flap in the wind till it dries to the consistence of leather: it is then called stock-fish. Before midsummer, flotillas of the swift boats called yagts gather again to the Lofodens, and bear away for exportation to Spain and Italy the dried results of the spring labour. Bergen is the great emporium for this trade. The other industry of the islands is the extraction of 'cod-liver oil:' the livers of all kinds of fishes supply this medicine, those of sharks being peculiarly esteemed. Along the low rocks, and around the houses, one finds great caldrons in which these painfully odorous livers are being slowly stewed: a heavy steam arises, and the oily smell spreads far and wide. But this is not a feature peculiar to the Lofodens : all over the coast of Finmark the shores reek with this Maelström. flavour of cod-liver oil. It is a matter of regret to me, in my function of apologist for these islands, that truth obliges me to raze to the ground with ruthless hand the romantic fabric of fable that has surrounded one of them from time immemorial. The Maelström, the terrific whirlpool, that Whirled to death the roaring whale, that sucked the largest ships into its monstrous vortex, and thundered so loudly that, as Purchas tells us in his veracious Pilgrimage, the rings on the doors of houses ten miles off shook at the sound of itthis wonder of the world must, alas! retire to that Limbo where the myths of old credulity gather, in a motley and fantastic array. There is no such whirlpool as Pontoppidan and Purchas describe: the site of the fabulous Maelström is put by the former writer between Moskenæsöe and the lofty isolated rock of Mosken. This passage is at the present day called Moskoström, and is one of those narrow straits, so common on the Norwegian coast, where the current of water sets with such persistent force in one direction, that when the tide or an adverse wind meets it, a great agitation of the surface takes place. I have myself seen, on one of the narrow sounds, the tide meet the current with such violence as to raise a little hissing wall across the water, which gave out a loud noise. This was in the calmest of weather; and it is easy to believe that such a phenomenon occurring during a storm, or when the sea was violently disturbed, would cause small boats passing over the spot to be in great peril, and might even suddenly swamp them. Some such disaster, observed from the shore, and exaggerated by the terror of the beholder, doubtless gave rise to the prodigious legends of the Such a catastrophe took place, I was informed, not long since, on the Salten Fjord, where there is an eddy more deserving the name of whirlpool than any in the Lofodens. Until lately the topography of the islands was in a very unsettled state. The name of the group begins to appear on maps of North Europe about the year 1600; but for a century and a half there is no sign to show that geographers were at all aware of the real position of the islands. In Pontoppidan's map the right point on the coast is at last fixed, but the oval smooth pieces of land at a great distance from one another which adorn the coast of Finmark on his chart are a sadly inaccurate realisation of these firmly-compacted and fantastically-shaped Lofodens. Only within the last few years has the patient survey of the Norwegian Admiralty presented us with a minute and exact chart of the coast, and the sea-line may now be considered as accurately laid down. But with the interior of the islands it is not so: they consist of inaccessible crags, dreary morasses, and impenetrable snow-fields. The Lofoden islander prizes the seashore, for it feeds and enriches him; the fringe of rich pasture which smiles along it, for it preserves his cattle; but the land which lies behind these is an unknown wilderness to him if he penetrates it, it is to destroy the insolent eagles that snap up stray lambs, or to seek some idle kid that has strayed beyond the flock. Hence it is very difficult to find names for the peaks that bristle on the horizon or tower above the valleys; in many cases they have no names, in many more these names have found their way into no printed maps. It was an object with me to fix on the true appellations of these magnificent mountains; and I was in many cases enabled, through the courtesy of : the people and through patient collation of reports, to increase the amount of information in this respect. It must be remembered that many of the names given were taken down from oral statement, and that the spelling must in some cases be phonetic. The only key to this enchanted palace of the Oceanides is, for ordinary travellers, the weekly steamer from Trondhjem. This invaluable vessel brings one, after a somewhat weary journey through an endless multitude of low, slippery, gray islets and tame hills, to the Arctic Circle. Another day through scenery which at that point becomes highly eccentric and interesting, and, in some places, grand, to Bodö. This depressing village is the London and Liverpool in one for the inhabitants of our islands: every luxury, from a watch to a piano, from a box of Huntley and Palmer's biscuits to a pig, must be brought from Bodö. After a long stoppage here, the steamer passes on up the coast some twenty miles to a strange place called Grytöe, a labyrinth of slimy rocks just high enough to hide the horizon. From this the boat emerges through a tortuous and perilous sound, and is at once in the great Vest Fjord. Forty miles ahead in one unbroken line rise the sharp mountains of the Lofodens, and without swerving a point, the good ship glides westnorth-west into the very centre of the great wall. If the traveller visit the islands in summer, and make the passage across the Vest Fjord at midnight, as he is almost sure to do, the scene, provided the air be clear and dry, will be gorgeous. In the weird Arctic midnight, with a calm sea shimmering before the bows, and all things clothed in that cold yellow lustre, deepening to amber and gold behind the great blue mountains, which is so strange a characteristic of the sun at mid night, the scene is wonderfully impressive. As the steamer glides on, making for Balstad on the southwest corner of Vest Vaagöe, Flakstadöe and Moskenæsöe lie somewhat to our left; and perchance, if the eye is very keen, far away in the same direction it may detect the little solitary rock of Værö, and still farther Röst itself, our ultima Thule. The southern range of the Lofodens has been compared to a vertebrated skeleton, and the simile is vastly well chosen; for the isles taper off to a minute tail, and the channels that run between them are so narrow and fit the outline so exactly that they appear like joints. Seen from the Vest Fjord the whole looks like one vast land, undivided. Higher and higher on the primrosecoloured sky the dark peaks rise as we approach our haven. And now the hills of Moskenæsöe assume definite shape; the two central points rising side by side are Guldtind and Reinebring, the former being the southern one. For an account, the only one I know, of Moskenæsöe, I can refer the reader to the Reise durch Norwegen of Herr C. F. Lessing, published, in 1831, at Berlin; a scarce book, I believe. Herr Lessing was an enterprising naturalist, who visited Værö, Mos kenæsöe, and Vest Vaagöe, and wrote an entertaining chapter about them in his excellent little book. The mountains of Moskenæsöe are not very lofty, but the island is very inaccessible, the shores being so steep and the outline so indented by the sea that it is necessary to take a boat from haven to haven: one cannot go by land. The highest mountain of Flakstadöe, the precipitous Napstind, is on the northern extremity of that island, and hidden from us by the projecting promontories of Vaagöe; but the lofty hills very slightly to our left belong to this island. Even while we speak, see, we glide between half-sub. merged rocks and rounded islets |