TODAL AND LILLEDAL 167 



ance, although the slopes on the Todal side are far 

 more gradual than the grim precipice which rises 

 like two walls above the lower part of the Sundal 

 valley. It was nearly midnight before we received a 

 welcome telephonic message announcing their arrival, 

 and we afterwards learnt that they had had to 

 negotiate some nasty ground, and found themselves 

 more than once in rather tight places during their 

 foolhardy descent. On another occasion during my 

 tenancy of Todal, I found a party of five unexpected 

 guests camped in the sitting-rooms when I came down 

 for my breakfast, Lort Phillips and his party having 

 crossed by the regular track, and broken in through 

 the windows in the small hours of the night. 



Todal is certainly an ideal place in which to 

 spend an autumn holiday. The house, designed by 

 the same female architect, was an improvement upon 

 Hvilested, with bath-room, and an icehouse outside 

 with a bachelor's room over it. The fishing was 

 certainly not so productive as the lower reaches of 

 the Sundal, but the little river held in good seasons 

 a fair number of salmon and sea-trout, and no boat 

 was required. Many of the pools were artificial, de- 

 signed by their owner, and made in the winter months 

 by means of barriers formed of boulders, placed upon 

 the ice, and deposited in their proper places when the 

 thaw came in the spring. About two miles above 

 the house a thundering foss of great beauty cleft its 

 way through the rocks, making a barrier which no 

 fish could ascend, and about the same distance below, 

 the river discharges its waters into the beauti- 

 ful fjords close to a pier, just opposite to a small 

 heathery island where eider-ducks and other water- 



