NORWEGIAN SNOW-FJELD. 51 



the last, as you reach a higher and a yet higher elevation, 

 till you stand, in the sharp and thin air, catching your 

 breath on the edge of the loftiest, the wildest, and most 

 barren of those snowy fjelds. The highest hut you have 

 left far below. You will spend the day and the night, 

 (such night as an unsetting sun allows,) too, in traversing 

 its lonely waste, and you will see neither habitation nor 

 human being, nor trace of human works ; no tree, nor 

 shrub, nor heath, nor even earth ; nothing but hard, bare 

 barren, lichen-clad rocks, or enormous fields and patches 

 of snow. Here and there a little reindeer-moss fills the 

 crevices of the shattered rocks, and this is all the verdure 

 of this wilderness of rocks and snow. You must plunge 

 through the soft snow above your knees for many a weary 

 mile ; this is very fatiguing : at other times, through bogs 

 of moss and melted snow ; and then, perhaps, through a 

 wide torrent, whose waters reach to your middle. Now 

 you have to cross a ridge of sharp rock, which stands like 

 an island out of the snow, the sharp edges of the granite 

 cutting into the leather of your shoes, now completely 

 soft and sodden with the melted snow. Now you have 

 to descend a steep snow-mountain ; this is very difficult, 

 and not without considerable danger if you are unaccus- 

 tomed to it. As every one may not know what the de- 

 scent of a Norwegian snow-mountain is, it may be well 

 to explain it. Imagine a very steep mountain covered 

 with deep, never-melting snow, perhaps five or six hun- 

 dred feet in height, the side presenting a bank of snow as 

 steep as the roof of a house. To try whether the descent 



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