ody will have energy enough to carry a path to its very foot. I
envy the travellers who will then visit the Voring-Foss.

A short distance above the fall there are a few cabins inhabited by
soeters, or herdsmen, whither we repaired to procure some fresh milk.
The house was rude and dirty; but the people received us in a friendly
manner. The powerful housewife laid aside her hay-rake, and brought us
milk which was actually sweet (a rare thing in Norway,) dirty, but not
rancid butter, and tolerable cheese. When my friend asked for water, she
dipped a pailful from a neighbouring stream, thick with decayed moss and
vegetable mould, and handed it to him. He was nice enough to pick out a
rotten root before drinking, which one of the children snatched up from
the floor and ate. Yet these people did not appear to be in want; they
were healthy, cheerful, and contented; and their filthy manner of living
was the result of sheer indolence and slovenliness. There was nothing to
prevent them from being neat and comfortable, even with their scanty
means; but the good gifts of God are always spoiled and wasted in dirty
hands.

When we opened our bottle of wine, an exquisite aroma diffused itself
through the room--a mingled smell of vine blossoms and ripe grapes. How
could the coarse vintage sent to the North, watered and chemically
doctored as it is, produce such a miracle? We tasted--superb old Chateau
Latour, from the sunniest hill of Bordeaux! By whatever accident it had
wandered thither, it did not fall into unappreciative hands. Even Brita
Halstendsdatter Hol, the strong housewife, smacked her lips over the
glass which she drank after sitting to me for her portrait.

When the sketch was completed, we filled the empty bottle with milk and
set out on our return.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Latham's translation.

XXXI.

SKETCHES FROM THE BERGENSTIFT.

Our return from the Voring-Foss to the hamlet of Saebo was accomplished
without accident or particular incident. As we were crossing the
Eyfjordsvand, the stillness of the savage glen, yet more profound in the
dusk of evening, was broken by the sudden thunder of a slide in some
valley to the eastward. Peder stopped in the midst of "_Frie dig ved
lifvet_" and listened. "Ho!" said he, "the spring is the time when the
rocks come down, but that sounds like a big fellow, too." Peder was not
so lively on the way back, not because he was fatigued, for in showing
us how they danced on th