ffoto 



( *r/r> ^t 

 MOUNTAIN PLATEAUX AND MOUNTAIN RAVINES. 33 



V<Jw> D,& 



rapidly all the time, a hollow reverberation, and a glimpse 

 of profounder abysses ahead, revealed the neighbourhood 

 of the Rinkan. All at once patches of lurid gloom 

 appeared through the openings of the birch thicket we 

 were threading, and we came abruptly upon the brink of 

 the great chasm into which the river falls. 



' The Rinkan lay before us, a miracle of spraying splen- 

 dour, an apparition of unearthly loveliness, set in a frame- 

 work of darkness and terror befitting the jaws of hell ! 

 Before us, so high against the sky as to shut out the 

 colours of sunset, rose the top of the valley, the level of 

 the Hardanger table-land, on which a short distance 

 further lies the Mios Vand, a lovely lake in which the 

 Maan Elv is born. The river first comes into sight a mass 

 of boiling foam, shooting around the corner of a line of 

 black cliffs which are rent for its passages, curves to the 

 right as it descends, and then drops on a single fall of 500 

 feet into a hollow cauldron of bare black rock. The water is 

 already foam as it leaps from the summit ; and the succes- 

 sive waves, as they are whirled into the air, and feel the 

 gusts which for ever revolve around the abyss, drop into 

 beaded fringes in falling, and go fluttering down like 

 scarfs of the richest lace. It is not water but the spirit 

 of water. The bottom is lost in a shifting snowy film, with 

 starry rays of foam radiating from the heart, below which, 

 as the cloud shifts, break momentary gleams of perfect 

 emerald light. What fairy towers of some Northern 

 Undine are suggested in those sudden flashes of silver 

 and green ! In that dim profound, which human eye can 

 but partially explore, in which human foot shall never be 

 set, what secret wonders may still lie hidden ! And 

 around this vision of perfect loveliness rise the awful 

 walls wet with spray which never dries, and crossed by 

 dazzling turf from the gulf below our feet, until still 

 further above our heads, they lift their irregular corners 

 against the sky. 



'I do not think I am extravagant when I say that the 

 Rinkan Foss is the most beautiful cataract in the world, 



D 



