A wedding-feast in Norway is always looked upon as a grand domestic event, and is ever made the most of by all parties concerned; but at Hammerfest and the north part of the country generally, it becomes a most important and demonstrative affair. No expense is spared by the bride's parents to render the event memorable in all respects. The revels are sometimes kept up for a period of three weeks, until at last every one becomes quite exhausted with the excitement and with dancing, when the celebration by common consent is brought to a close. During the height of the revels, street parades constitute a part of the singular performances, when bride, bridegroom, family and friends, preceded by a band of musicians, march gayly from point to point; or a line of boats is formed, with the principals in the first, the musicians in the second, and so on, all decked with natural and artificial flowers and bright-colored streamers. As we started out of Hammerfest harbor we chanced upon one of these aquatic bridal parties, accompanied by instrumental music and a chorus of many pleasant voices, the diaphanous dresses of bride and bridesmaids looking like mist-wreaths settled about the boats. It was easy to distinguish the bride from her attendants, by the tall, sparkling gilt crown which she wore.
In sailing along the coast after leaving the point just described, it is observed that vegetation grows more and more scarce. The land is seen to be useless for agricultural purposes; habitations first become rare, then almost entirely cease, bleakness reigning supreme, while one seems to be creeping higher and higher on the earth. In ascending lofty mountains, say in the Himalayan range, we realize that there are heights still above us; but in approaching the North Cape a feeling comes over us that we are gradually getting to the very apex of the globe. Everything seems to be beneath our feet; the broad, deep, unbounded ocean alone makes the horizon. Day and night cease to be relative terms, while the strange effect and the magic brightness of a Polar night utterly beggar description. As we rounded one of the many abrupt rocky islets in our course, which came up dark, steep, and inaccessible from an unknown depth, there flew up from the smooth waters into which the steamer ploughed her way a couple of small ducks, each with a young bird snugly ensconced upon its back, between the broad-spread, narrow wings. This was to the writer a novelty, though an officer of the ship said it was not unusual to see certain species of Arctic ducks thus transporting their ducklings. One reads of woodcock at times seizing their young in their talons, and bearing them away from impending danger; but a web-footed bird could not effectually adopt this mode in any exigency. It seems however that Nature has taught the ducks another fashion of transporting their helpless progeny. The birds we had disturbed did not fly aloft with their tiny burdens, but skimmed over the surface of the fjord into some one of the sheltering nooks along the irregular shore. We were further told a curious fact, if fact it be, that the young ducks of the female species, almost as soon as they are able to fly, begin to practise the habit of carrying something upon their backs. That is to say, they are not infrequently found skimming along the surface of the water with a small wad of sea-weed, such as is used by aquatic birds in nest-building, carefully supported between their wings. Just so little girls are prone to pet a doll, the maternal instinct exhibiting itself in early childhood. The male and female birds are easily distinguished from each other by the difference in their plumage. The former do not show this inclination for carrying baby burdens, neither do young boys display a predilection for dolls! We commend these facts to the notice of naturalists.