the waters enter it as they come down
from the forest, is called the Siegdahlen,--a word which may be held to
mean "the shedding of the Sieg,"--the river itself receiving that name.
The curving shore opposite to the face of the Falberg is the valley
of Jarvis,--a smiling scene overlooked by hills clothed with firs,
birch-trees, and larches, mingled with a few oaks and beeches, the
richest coloring of all the varied tapestries which Nature in these
northern regions spreads upon the surface of her rugged rocks. The eye
can readily mark the line where the soil, warmed by the rays of the sun,
bears cultivation and shows the native growth of the Norwegian flora.
Here the expanse of the fiord is broad enough to allow the sea, dashed
back by the Falberg, to spend its expiring force in gentle murmurs upon
the lower slope of these hills,--a shore bordered with finest sand,
strewn with mica and sparkling pebbles, porphyry, and marbles of a
thousand tints, brought from Sweden by the river floods, together with
ocean waifs, shells, and flowers of the sea driven in by tempests,
whether of the Pole or Tropics.

At the foot of the hills of Jarvis lies a village of some two hundred
wooden houses, where an isolated population lives like a swarm of bees
in a forest, without increasing or diminishing; vegetating happily,
while wringing their means of living from the breast of a stern Nature.
The almost unknown existence of the little hamlet is readily accounted
for. Few of its inhabitants were bold enough to risk their lives
among the reefs to reach the deep-sea fishing,--the staple industry of
Norwegians on the least dangerous portions of their coast. The fish of
the fiord were numerous enough to suffice, in part at least, for the
sustenance of the inhabitants; the valley pastures provided milk and
butter; a certain amount of fruitful, well-tilled soil yielded rye
and hemp and vegetables, which necessity taught the people to protect
against the severity of the cold and the fleeting but terrible heat of
the sun with the shrewd ability which Norwegians display in the two-fold
struggle. The difficulty of communication with the outer world, either
by land where the roads are impassable, or by sea where none but tiny
boats can thread their way through the maritime defiles that guard the
entrance to the bay, hinder these people from growing rich by the sale
of their timber. It would cost enormous sums to either blast a channel
out to sea or co