Having hired an open boat and a crew of three hands, I left Hammerfest at nine P.M., July 2, 1850, to visit the celebrated Nordkap. The boat was one of the peculiar Nordland build--very long, narrow, sharp, but strongly built, with both ends shaped alike, and excellently adapted either for rowing or sailing. We had a strong head-wind from northeast at starting, and rowed across the harbor to the spot where the house of the British consul, Mr. Robertson, a Scotchman, is situated, near to the little battery (_fæstning_) which was erected to defend the approach to Hammerfest, subsequently to the atrocious seizure of the place by two English ships during the last war. Mr. Robertson kindly lent me a number of reindeer skins to lie on at the bottom of the boat; and spreading them on the rough stones we carried for ballast, I was thus provided with an excellent bed. I have slept for a fortnight at a time on reindeer skins, and prefer them to any feather bed. Mr. Robertson warned me that I should find it bitterly cold at sea, and expressed surprise at my light clothing; but I smiled, and assured him that my hardy wandering life had habituated me to bear exposure of every kind with perfect impunity. By an ingenious contrivance of a very long tiller, the pilot steered with one hand and rowed with the other, and we speedily cleared the harbor, and crept round the coast of Qual Oe (Whale-Island), on which Hammerfest is situated. About midnight, when the sun was shining a considerable way above the horizon, the view of a solitary little rock, in the ocean ahead, bathed in a flood of crimson glory, was most impressive. We proceeded with a tolerable wind until six in the morning, when heavy squalls of wind and torrents of rain began to beat upon us, forcing us to run, about two hours afterward, into Havösund; a very narrow strait between the island of Havöe and the mainland of Finmark. As it was impossible to proceed in such a tempest, we ran the boat to a landing-place in front of the summer residence of Herr Ulich, a great magnate in Finmark. This is undoubtedly the most northern gentleman's house in the world. It is a large, handsome, wooden building, painted white, and quite equal in appearance to the better class of villas in the North. The family only reside there during the three summer months; and extensive warehouses for the trade in dried cod or stockfish, &c. are attached. My crew obtained shelter in an outbuilding, and I unhesitatingly sought the hospitality of the mansion. Herr Ulich himself was absent, being at his house at Hammerfest, but his amiable lady, and her son and two daughters, received me with a frank cordiality as great as though I were an old friend; and in a few minutes I was thoroughly at home. Here I found a highly accomplished family, surrounded with the luxuries and refinements of civilization, dwelling amid the wildest solitudes, and so near the North Cape, that it can be distinctly seen from their house in clear weather.