, and expected, from the boasted honesty of the
Norwegians, to meet with an equally fortunate experience. Travellers,
however, and especially English, are fast teaching the people the usual
arts of imposition. Oh, you hard-shelled, unplastic, insulated
Englishmen! You introduce towels and fresh water, and tea, and
beefsteak, wherever you go, it is true; but you teach high prices, and
swindling, and insolence likewise!

A short distance beyond Holmen, the new road terminated, and we took the
old track over steep spurs of the mountain, rising merely to descend and
rise again. The Lougen River here forms a broad, tranquil lake, a mile
in width, in which the opposite mountains were splendidly reflected. The
water is pale, milky-green colour, which, under certain effects of
light, has a wonderful aerial transparency. As we approached Losnas,
after this long and tedious stage, I was startled by the appearance of a
steamer on the river. It is utterly impossible for any to ascend the
rapids below Moshuus; and she must therefore have been built there. We
could discover no necessity for such an undertaking in the thin
scattered population and their slow, indifferent habits. Her sudden
apparition in such a place was like that of an omnibus in the desert.

The magnificent vista of the valley was for a time closed by the snowy
peaks of the Rundan Fjeld; but as the direction of the river changed
they disappeared, the valley contracted, and its black walls, two
thousand feet high, almost overhung us. Below, however, were still fresh
meadows, twinkling birchen groves and comfortable farm-houses. Out of a
gorge on our right, plunged a cataract from a height of eighty or ninety
feet, and a little further on, high up the mountain, a gush of braided
silver foam burst out of the dark woods, covered with gleaming drapery
the face of a huge perpendicular crag, and disappeared in the woods
again, My friend drew up his horse in wonder and rapture. "I know all
Switzerland and the Tyrol," he exclaimed, "but I have never seen a
cataract so wonderfully framed in the setting of a forest." In the
evening, as we approached our destination, two streams on the opposite
side of the valley, fell from a height of more than a thousand feet, in
a series of linked plunges, resembling burnished chains hanging dangling
from the tremendous parapet of rock. On the meadow before us, commanding
a full view of this wild and glorious scene, stood a stately _gaard_,