Jitstedal, and to the Mantle of Lodal. S59 



the shealing, could scarcely open themselves a way with axes, 

 through the prodigious offshots which had come from it during 

 the foregoing day. Close beside this sione-road, under hang- 

 ing rocks, and immediately before the glacier, were full grown 

 birch 3 mountain-ash, and other trees, with the common subal- 

 pine shrubs and plants. This glacier ascends to near the foot 

 of LodaPs Mantle, the inexhaustible snows of which feed this 

 and all the other glaciers around. 



If, by the north-west side of the glacier, you press forward 

 through several wild stretches of valley-ground, whose precipitous 

 sides some terrible giant seems in his wrath to have overlaid with a 

 multitude of loose masses of rock, which seem jiist about to 

 crush the passing wanderer, you come at 'last to the cheerful 

 shealings of Faaberg, about 1280 feet above the level of the sea. 

 Here the happy pastoral life, and the true alpine scenery, exhi- 

 bit themselves in their finest and most peculiar characters. Be- 

 tween four and five miles from the cots of Faaberg, Stordal be- 

 gins to be narrower and narrower, till at once the whole scene 

 is changed, and every thing becomes wild and frightful. Yel- 

 low meadows and green mountain-downs now touch on large 

 desolate fields of sand and gravel, and small stones, and masses 

 of rock of the size of a castle. These fields are cut through by 

 many small streams of water, gurgling from both the bottom 

 and the surface of the glacier above. The whole is inclosed by 

 naked columns of rock, and in the back ground the lower mar- 

 gins of the two proudest of the offspring of Lodal's Mantle, the 

 glaciers of Lodal and Trangedal, present themselves, at the 

 height of 1597 feet above the level of the sea. They are sepa- 

 rated from one another by a small mountain, covered all over 

 with ice and snow. The nearest verges of the glaciers exhibited 

 innumerable clefts of the most splendid appearance, and of a 

 sky-blue colour. The moraine shewed clearly that these gla- 

 ciers, too, had formerly descended about 1700 feet farther down ; 

 while the dark naked sides of the mountain, as if the surface 

 had been shorn off, shewed that they had been formerly about 

 200 feet deeper. 



Our walk over the Glacier of Lodal was not difficult ; you 

 might ride, or even drive over it, if there were a road to it for 

 carriages. You can come down on the surface of the ice from 



