who, judging from what I saw of them,
are downright indolent Evidences of slow, patient, plodding toil, one
sees truly; but active industry, thrift, and honest ambition, nowhere.

The scenery increased in wildness and roughness as we proceeded. The
summit of Hvitnaset (White-nose) lifted its pinnacles of grey rock over
the brow of the mountains on the north, and in front, pale, blue-grey
peaks, 5000 feet high, appeared on either hand. The next station was a
village of huts on the side of a hill. Everybody was in the fields
except one woman, who remained to take charge of the station. She was a
stupid creature, but had a proper sense of her duty; for she started at
full speed to order horses, and we afterwards found that she must have
run full three English miles in the space of half an hour. The
emigration to America from this part of Bergenstift has been very great,
and the people exhibited much curiosity to see and speak with us.

The scenery became at the same time more barren and more magnificent, as
we approached the last station, Stalheim, which is a miserable little
village at the head of the famous Naerodal. Our farmer-postillion wished
to take us on to Gudvangen with the same horses, urging the same reasons
as the former one. It would have been better if we had accepted his
proposal; but our previous experience had made us mistrustful. The man
spoke truth, however; hour after hour passed away, and the horses came
not. A few miserable people collected about us, and begged money. I
sketched the oldest, ugliest and dirtiest of them, as a specimen, but
regretted it afterwards, as his gratitude on receiving a trifle for
sitting, obliged me to give him my hand. Hereupon another old fellow,
not quite so hideous, wanted to be taken also. "Lars," said a woman to
the former, "are you not ashamed to have so ugly a face as yours go to
America?" "Oh," said he, "it does not look so ugly in the book." His
delight on getting the money created some amusement. "Indeed," he
protested, "I am poor, and want it; and you need not laugh."

The last gush of sunset was brightening the tops of the savage fjeld
when the horses arrived. We had waited two hours and three quarters and
I therefore wrote a complaint in the post-book in my best Norsk. From
the top of a hill beyond the village, we looked down into the Naerodal.
We stood on the brink of a tremendous wall about a thousand feet above
the valley. On one side, the stream we had bee