JUNE 135 



the alphabet by no marks visible to ordinary eyesight. 

 Each stolkjcerre carries a pair of tourists, the driver walk- 

 ing behind up the gentlest acclivity (so tenderly do 

 these Norsemen treat their cattle), a long string of 

 sightseers, chattering, doubtless, as is the custom of their 

 kind ; yet from all the crowd no sound nor syllable 

 reaches my ear, all minor noise being quenched in the 

 majestic roar of the foss of Aarnhoe. They were out 

 of luck, these wayfarers, for yesterday the heaven was 

 overcast. Clouds clipped the mountains of quite two- 

 thirds of their height, and lent a gloomy horror to the 

 rest. The fantastic crests of Troldtinder (the Witch 

 Peaks) and the columnar summit of the Horn were 

 blotted from view ; nothing but guide-books to assure 

 the travellers that they were passing between cliffs rising 

 almost sheer more than five thousand feet above the 

 narrow valley; nothing to gaze upon above the green 

 birchwoods, where the chattering fieldfares nest, but 

 stupendous rock-faces, roofed across from side to side 

 by the gray canopy of cloud. British, Germans, and 

 Americans, they say, contribute nine-tenths of the tourist 

 traffic nations foremost in commercial instinct. To 

 some among those in that long, slow procession it must 

 have occurred to muse on such magnificent wall-spaces 

 wasted cliffs whereon the enterprising advertiser might 

 yell forth his wares in letters a thousand feet high. 



To-day, how different is the scene ! The cloud-curtain 

 has rolled away, a glorious sun blazes upon the valley, 

 every pinnacle and peak stands clear-cut against the blue. 

 The snow-field aloft is sweating freely ; a score of cascades 

 swing from the cliffs like milky ropes ; from time to time 

 a sudden, dull boom marks the discharge of an avalanche, 



