down which we now glided over the glassy water, is
a narrow mountain avenue of glorious scenery. The unseen plateaus of the
Blaa and Graa Fjelds, on either hand, spilled their streams over
precipices from 1000 to 2000 feet in height, above whose cornices shot
the pointed summits of bare grey rock, wreathed in shifting clouds, 4000
feet above the sea. Pine-trees feathered the less abrupt steeps, with
patches of dazzling turf here and there; and wherever a gentler slope
could be found in the coves, stood cottages surrounded by potato-fields
and ripe barley stacked on poles. Not a breath of air rippled the dark
water, which was a perfect mirror to the mountains and the strip of sky
between them, while broad sheets of morning sunshine, streaming down the
breaks in the line of precipices, interrupted with patches of fiery
colour the deep, rich, transparent gloom of the shadows. It was an
enchanted voyage until we reached the mouth of the Aurlands Fjord,
divided from that of Gudvangen by a single rocky buttress 1000 feet
high. Beyond this point the watery channel is much broader, and the
shores diminish in grandeur as they approach the Sogne Fjord, of which
this is but a lateral branch.

I was a little disappointed in the scenery of Sogne Fjord, The mountains
which enclose it are masses of sterile rock, neither lofty nor bold
enough in their forms to make impression, after the unrivalled scenery
through which we had passed. The point of Vangnaes, a short distance to
the westward, is the "Framnaes" of Frithiof's Saga, and I therefore
looked towards it with some interest, for the sake of that hero and his
northern lily, Ingeborg. There are many bauta-stones still standing on
the shore, but one who is familiar with Tegner's poem must not expect
to find his descriptions verified, either in scenery or tradition. On
turning eastward, around the point of Fronningen, we were surprised by
the sudden appearance of two handsome houses, with orchards and gardens,
on the sunny side of the bank. The vegetation, protected in some degree
from the sea-winds, was wonderfully rich and luxuriant. There were now
occasional pine-woods on the southern shore, but the general aspect of
this fjord is bleak and desolate. In the heat and breathless silence of
noonday, the water was like solid crystal. A faint line, as if drawn
with a pencil along the bases of the opposite mountains, divided them
from the equally perfect and palpable mountains inverted be