140 FORESTRY OF NORWAY. 



you were sailing on a river. The scenery at times is 

 extremely fine. The greater part of the country is 

 uninhabited; now and then the sea is so completely 

 land-locked that it appears as if the journey was ended, 

 when suddenly comes into view an opening, and another 

 broad expanse of water stretches in the distance ; the 

 channel is sometimes so narrow and tortuous that the 

 vessel almost touches the rocks. . . . 



' In about six hours from Bergen the entrance to the 

 Sogne is reached, where it is six or seven miles wide. 

 Skirting the southern shore, you pass a grand mass of rocks. 

 The Sognefest the Castle of the Sogne is very bold in 

 its outlines, and apparently forming two sides of a square. 

 The scenery spread before the traveller is superb, a pano- 

 rama ever changing in its views of snow-topped mountains : 

 in the north are the Justedal glaciers, towering mountains 

 in the east, in the south the snow-fields of Fresvik. The 

 vegetation improves as you penetrate inland ; the bases of 



the mountains and hills are clad with woods 



The valleys by the fiords are often quite fertile and well- 

 cultivated, contrasting singularly with the barren moun- 

 tains which surround them. From the water they appear 

 to form an oval basin with a ravine at the end, towards 

 which the mountain sides slope gently, evidently hollowed 

 by the agency of ice and water. Sometimes two ravines 

 enter the valley, like radiating branches. At the base of 

 the mountains the terraces rise one above another to the 

 number of three or four. 



' At about sixty miles from its entrance the Sogne seems 

 suddenly to end at the base of a high mountain ; it sharply 

 turns northward, and the island of Kvamsoe is passed, and 

 a few miles further the main fiord runs once more east- 

 ward, while to the north is the entrance of Fjaerland, the 

 first large branch of the Sogne. 



' The steamer stops at the thrifty hamlet of Balholmen. 

 opposite to which is Vangsnaes, the scene of Frithiof s 

 Saga. Sombre is the Fjaerland, with its mountains, 

 glaciers, and its wild scenery. Streams, fed by the melted 



