block houses of solitary towns, and
sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock.

Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains between
Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs, which first become
confluent and have one bed above Balstad. They have taken up rivers
and lakes in their waters. Do but visit this place! here are pictorial
riches to be found; the most picturesque landscapes, dizzyingly grand,
smilingly pastoral--idyllic: one is drawn onward up to the very source
of the elv, the bubbling well above Finman's hut: one feels a desire
to follow every branch of the stream that the river takes in.

The first mighty fall, Njupeskoers cataract, is seen by the Norwegian
frontier in Sernasog. The mountain stream rushes perpendicularly from
the rock to a depth of seventy fathoms.

We pause in the dark forest, where the elv seems to collect within
itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls its clear waters
over a porphyry soil where the mill-wheel is driven, and the gigantic
porphyry bowls and sarcophagi are polished.

We follow the stream through Siljan's lake, where superstition sees
the water-sprite swim, like the sea-horse with a mane of green
sea-weed, and where the aerial images present visions of witchcraft in
the warm summer days.

We sail on the stream from Siljan's lake, under the weeping willows of
the parsonage, where the swans assemble in flocks; we glide along
slowly with horses and carriages on the great ferry-boat, away over
the rapid current under Balstad's picturesque shore. Here the elv
widens and rolls its billows majestically in a woodland landscape, as
large and extended as if it were in North America.

We see the rushing, rapid stream under Avista's yellow clay
declivities: the yellow water falls like fluid amber in picturesque
cataracts before the copper-works, where rainbow-coloured tongues of
fire shoot themselves upwards, and the hammer's blows on the copper
plates resound to the monotonous, roaring rumble of the elv-fall.

And now, as a concluding passage of splendour in the life of the
Dal-elvs, before they lose themselves in the waters of the Baltic, is
the view of Elvkarleby Fall. Schubert compares it with the fall of
Schafhausen; but we must remember, that the Rhine there has not such a
mass of water as that which rushes down Elvkarleby.

Two and a half Swedish miles from Gefle, where the high road to Upsala
goes over the Dal-elv,