dsome
farm-houses, while the lower slopes of the hills and the mound-like
knolls scattered along their bases, were framed to the very summit,
steep as they were. The whole scene was like a piece of landscape
gardening, full of the loveliest effects, which were enhanced by the
contrast of the grey, sterile mountains by which the picture was framed.
The soft, level sunshine, streaming through the rifts of broken
thunder-clouds in the west, slowly wandered over the peaceful valley,
here lighting up a red-roofed homestead, there a grove in full summer
foliage, or a meadow of so brilliant an emerald that it seemed to shine
by its own lustre. As we approached the Lierfoss, the road was barred
with a great number of gates, before which waited a troop of ragged
boys, who accompanied us the whole of the way, with a pertinacity equal
to that of the little Swiss beggars.

The Nid here makes two falls about half a mile apart, the lower one
being eighty, and the upper one ninety feet in height. The water is of a
dark olive-green colour, and glassy transparency, and so deep that at
the brink it makes huge curves over the masses of rock in its bed
without breaking into the faintest ripple. As you stand on a giant
boulder above it, and contrast the swift, silent rush with the
thundering volume of amber-tinted spray which follows, you feel in its
full force the strange fascination of falling water--the temptation to
plunge in and join in its headlong revelry. Here, however, I must admit
that the useful is not always the beautiful. The range of smoky mills
driven by a sluice from the fall had better be away. The upper fall is
divided in the centre by a mass of rock, and presents a broader and more
imposing picture, though the impetus of the water is not so great.

The coast between Drontheim and Bergen is, on the whole, much less
striking than that further north; but it has some very grand features.
The outer islands are, with few exceptions, low and barren, but the
coast, deeply indented with winding fjords, towers here and there into
sublime headlands, and precipitous barriers of rock. Christiansund,
where we touched the first afternoon, is a singularly picturesque place,
built on four islands, separated by channels in the form of a cross. The
bare, rounded masses of grey rock heave up on all sides behind the
houses, which are built along the water's edge; here and there a tree of
superb greenness shines against the colourless backgro