2 8 Norivay and the Norivegians 



this feature is the rapidity with which the flowers come 

 to maturity, so that we see — what seems so strange to 

 us — blooming side by side the flowers of spring and of 

 late summer. While you find the ditches still yellow 

 with golans, you see the wild rose-trees in full bloom, 

 the meadows full of harebells, and the foxgloves out in 

 the woods and on the hill-sides. 



Such are some of the beauties of Norway, and these, 

 as I have said, belong chiefly to the fjord districts. 

 Then, again, these fjords are so numerous, the distances 

 in Norway are so great, that there is little danger for 

 the traveller that he will exhaust the beauties to be 

 seen in these regious, supposing it were really possible 

 to exhaust the beauties of nature. Far be it from me 

 to suggest that such is possible: but still, taking the 

 average tourist as we find him, it must be owned that 

 it would be far easier for him to do Switzerland than 

 to do Norway. 



It is, therefore, reasonable that the average traveller 

 should confine himself almost exclusively to the fjord 

 district, but by so doing he hardly gets an idea of the 

 character of Norwegian scenery as a whole. The effect 

 of seeing Norway only from the sea is something like 

 the effect of seeing tlie Ehine-land only from the Ehine. 

 In the latter case we get an impression of passing 

 through almost a mountainous country; but if we 

 clamber up to the top of these hills we find we are on 

 a vast table-land, and that it is the deep bed of the 

 river which produced the illusion of hills. So, in the 

 case of Norway, it is the sudden cutting off of the table- 

 land of the country which is accountable for the greater 

 part of the effects which we witness from the fjordside. 



