, not more than two feet deep, rests
on a solid bed of rock,--the entire Hardanger Fjeld, in fact, is but a
single rock,--and is therefore always swampy. Whortleberries were
abundant, as well as the multeberry (_Rubus chamoemorus_), which I have
found growing in Newfoundland; and Peder, running off on the hunt of
them, was continually leading us astray. But at last, we approached the
wreath of whirling spray, and heard the hollow roar of the Voring-Foss.
The great chasm yawned before us; another step, and we stood on the
brink. I seized the branch of a tough pine sapling as a support and
leaned over. My head did not swim; the height was too great for that,
the impression too grand and wonderful. The shelf of rock on which I
stood projected far out over a gulf 1200 feet deep, whose opposite side
rose in one great escarpment from the bottom to a height of 800 feet
above my head. On this black wall, wet with eternal spray, was painted a
splendid rainbow, forming two thirds of a circle before it melted into
the gloom below. A little stream fell in one long thread of silver from
the very summit, like a plumb-line dropped to measure the 2000 feet. On
my right hand the river, coming down from the level of the fjeld in a
torn, twisted, and boiling mass, reached the brink of the gulf at a
point about 400 feet below me, whence it fell in a single sheet to the
bottom, a depth of between 800 and 900 feet.

Could one view it from below, this fall would present one of the
grandest spectacles in the world. In height, volume of water, and
sublime surroundings it has no equal. The spectator, however, looks down
upon it from a great height above its brink, whence it is so
foreshortened that he can only guess its majesty and beauty. By lying
upon your belly and thrusting your head out beyond the roots of the
pines, you can safely peer into the dread abyss, and watch, through the
vortex of whirling spray in its tortured womb, the starry coruscations
which radiate from the bottom of the fall, like rockets of water
incessantly exploding. But this view, sublime as it is, only whets your
desire to stand below, and see the river, with its sprayey crest shining
against the sky, make but one leap from heaven to hell. Some persons
have succeeded, by entering the chasm at its mouth in the valley below,
in getting far enough to see a portion of the fall, the remainder being
concealed by a projecting rock; and the time will come, no doubt, when
someb