JUNE 141 



with sculls like exaggerated egg-spoons. Such is the 

 type which the men of Sundal have found most buoyant 

 in rough water, and they venture far more boldly upon 

 rapids than do the people of Romsdal. They would be 

 all right, these ugly, ill-painted, little craft, if they were 

 not so abominably leaky ; but it is trying to a foreigner's 

 nerves when the boatman lays down his sculls in some 

 three-cornered eddy among the green breakers, with a 

 roaring foss a few yards below, and begins to bale as 

 leisurely as if he were lying alongside a quay. 



To apprehend the glory of Sundal, you should see it 

 before you visit Romsdal. To reverse the order is like 

 coming from Glencoe to the English lakes. The moun- 

 tains guarding each dal are about equal in height. 

 Kaldfonna, whose glacier, suspended far aloft, seems on 

 the point of slipping from its bed and filling the vale with 

 ruin, claims to be fifty feet higher than the Troldtinder of 

 Romsdal ; but it does not impend over the river with the 

 like tremendous menace, nor does it toss its crests into 

 such fantastic forms as the other. There is nothing hi 

 Sundal like the uncouth abruptness of Romsdalshorn ; 

 but the chief difference between the two dais lies in their 

 relative width. Sundal is a narrow valley, Romsdal an 

 awe-inspiring gorge. 



Sundal is better timbered than its rival. The pine- 

 woods about Hoass are broad and fine fine, that is, for 

 Norway, which compares ill with Sweden in the matter of 

 forestry. Swedish forest management approaches the 

 German in wise system; but in Norway, except where 

 large tracts have come into the hands either of the 

 Government or of timber companies, the peasant pro- 

 prietors treat their woods on the cut-and-come-again 



