NOTES ON A SUMMER TOUR IN NORWAY. 81 
rise to magnificent torrents and waterfalls, which come thundering 
down the mountain sides in all their liquid splendour. 
No picture in black and white can give an idea of the 
beauty of the waterfalls. Owing to the extreme initial purity of 
the water derived from the melting snows, and to the fact that the 
course of the stream, besides being short, is over hard and highly- 
crystalline rocks, from which no impurity is taken up, the water 
of the Norwegian streams, waterfalls, and rills is of an intense 
emerald green tint, which, flashing through the white foam, lends 
a charm of intense colour to the scene which is perfectly 
indescribable, and which requires the highest art of the painter to 
realise on canvas. 
I will not detain you with any description of Bergen, interest- 
ing as the town is from its old Hanseatic associations, and from 
the fact that it is the great trading centre of Norway, but will 
carry you to the beautiful stretch of country which lies between 
the Hardanger and the Sognefjords. 
On crossing the water parting between the two fjord systems, 
we descend towards Gudvangen through the Naerodal, a beautiful 
glen, which forms the landward continuation of one of the valleys 
in which the Sognefjord lies. On the left of the valley is the 
mountain Jordalsnut, whose rounded contour is visible to the 
very summit, which is 3,600 feet high. 
We are now on the Sognefjord, the largest of all these wonder- 
ful inlets. It penetrates the country for a distance of 112 miles, 
and ‘‘forms one of the most important highways of traffic in 
western Norway, and also one of the most convenient avenues to 
some of the grandest and wildest scenery in the country.” It 
attains in some places the enormous depth of 4,000 feet. As the 
sea at its mouth does not exceed more than about 300 feet in 
depth, if we accept the glacial theory of erosion to which I have 
referred, it means that depressions have been scooped out by ice 
in the bottom of the old sub-aérial valleys to a depth of upwards 
of 3,700 feet. It is facts like this which make one pause before 
accepting such a theory with all its consequences, but no more 
likely pre hypothesis has been framed ; at the same time, I 
