ey.
The houses of Mael, clustered about its little church, were scattered
over the slope above the lake; and across the river, amid the fields of
grass and grain, stood another village of equal size. The bed of the
valley, dotted with farms and groups of farm-houses, appeared to be
thickly populated; but as a farmer's residence rarely consists of less
than six buildings--sometimes even eight--a stranger would naturally
overrate the number of inhabitants. The production of grain, also, is
much less than would be supposed from the amount of land under
cultivation, owing to the heads being so light. The valley of the Maan,
apparently a rich and populous region, is in reality rather the reverse.
In relation to its beauty, however, there can be no two opinions. Deeply
sunken between the Gousta and another bold spur of the Hardanger, its
golden harvest-fields and groves of birch, ash, and pine seem doubly
charming from the contrast of the savage steeps overhanging them, at
first scantily feathered with fir-trees, and scarred with the tracks of
cataracts and slides, then streaked only with patches of grey moss, and
at last bleak and sublimely bare. The deeply-channelled cone of the
Gousta, with its indented summit, rose far above us, sharp and clear in
the thin ether; but its base, wrapped in forests and wet by many a
waterfall--sank into the bed of blue vapour which filled the valley.

There was no Arabian, nor even Byzantine blood in our horses; and our
attendants--a stout full-grown farmer and a boy of sixteen--easily kept
pace with their slow rough trot. In order to reach Tinoset the next day,
we had determined to push on to the Riukan Foss the same evening. Our
quarters for the night were to be in the house of the old farmer, Ole
Torgensen, in the village of Dal, half-way between Mael and the
cataract, which we did not reach until five o'clock, when the sun was
already resting his chin on the shoulder of the Gousta. On a turfy slope
surrounded with groves, above the pretty little church of Dal, we found
Ole's _gaard_. There was no one at home except the daughter, a blooming
lass of twenty, whose neat dress, and graceful, friendly deportment,
after the hideous feminines of Hallingdal, in their ungirdled sacks and
shifts, so charmed us that if we had been younger, more sentimental, and
less experienced in such matters, I should not answer for the
consequences. She ushered us into the guests' room, which was neatness
itself,