nstruct a way to the interior. The roads from Christiana
to Trondhjem all turn toward the Strom-fiord, and cross the Sieg by a
bridge some score of miles above its fall into the bay. The country to
the north, between Jarvis and Trondhjem, is covered with impenetrable
forests, while to the south the Falberg is nearly as much separated
from Christiana by inaccessible precipices. The village of Jarvis might
perhaps have communicated with the interior of Norway and Sweden by
the river Sieg; but to do this and to be thus brought into contact with
civilization, the Strom-fiord needed the presence of a man of genius.
Such a man did actually appear there,--a poet, a Swede of great
religious fervor, who died admiring, even reverencing this region as one
of the noblest works of the Creator.

Minds endowed by study with an inward sight, and whose quick perceptions
bring before the soul, as though painted on a canvas, the contrasting
scenery of this universe, will now apprehend the general features of
the Strom-fiord. They alone, perhaps, can thread their way through the
tortuous channels of the reef, or flee with the battling waves to the
everlasting rebuff of the Falberg whose white peaks mingle with the
vaporous clouds of the pearl-gray sky, or watch with delight the curving
sheet of waters, or hear the rushing of the Sieg as it hangs for an
instant in long fillets and then falls over a picturesque abatis of
noble trees toppled confusedly together, sometimes upright, sometimes
half-sunken beneath the rocks. It may be that such minds alone can dwell
upon the smiling scenes nestling among the lower hills of Jarvis; where
the luscious Northern vegetables spring up in families, in myriads,
where the white birches bend, graceful as maidens, where colonnades
of beeches rear their boles mossy with the growth of centuries, where
shades of green contrast, and white clouds float amid the blackness of
the distant pines, and tracts of many-tinted crimson and purple shrubs
are shaded endlessly; in short, where blend all colors, all perfumes of
a flora whose wonders are still ignored. Widen the boundaries of this
limited ampitheatre, spring upward to the clouds, lose yourself among
the rocks where the seals are lying and even then your thought cannot
compass the wealth of beauty nor the poetry of this Norwegian coast.
Can your thought be as vast as the ocean that bounds it? as weird as
the fantastic forms drawn by these forests, these clouds,