20 FORESTRY OF NORWAY. 
foot of each fall a perfect barrier of pines was formed, to 
which many were added while we stood witnessing the 
struggle. Some, eddying in the whirlpools, seemed des- 
tined never to get free; one almost wondered how any 
escaped: numbers were broken up, and some never 
recovered. The whole shore below the falls was strewed 
with the giant bulk, disjecta membra, of these spoils of the 
forest, thus arrested in their progress to the sea. 
‘Felled and sledged to the nearest stream during the 
winter, no sooner is its frozen channel set free by the 
returning spring, and swelled by the influx from the dis- 
solving snow, than the timber, thus left to its fate, begins 
its long journey Borne down by the foaming torrents 
which lash the base of its native hills, far in the interior ; 
hurried over rapids ; taking in its onward course along the 
shores of winding lakes, or slowly dropping down in the 
quiet current of broad rivers, the accumulated mass is 
brought up at last by a strong boom placed across the 
stream, where it discharges itself into navigable waters. 
It is then sorted, appropriated by the merchants to whom 
it is consigned, and shipped for foreign ports. One would 
wonder how it ever reached the place of its destination, 
or how, of the numerous owners, each could recognise his 
own, But I was given to understand that the logs are 
branded with the owner’s mark before they are committed 
to the stream; and I observed that during their passage 
down the lakes they. were collected into immense rafts, 
curiously framed and pinned together ; but so unwieldy 
and unmanageable are the masses, that but little can be 
done in the way of navigation beyond fending them off 
the shores and rocks, and keeping them in the current. 
Some of the timber is said to be two years in finding its 
way to the coast.’ 
Tn accordance with this narrative is that already given 
of what was seen at Vigelund, on the Torrisdal river, 
flowing into the Fiord at Christiansand. 
To resume the narrative by Forester :— 
