FOREST SCENES. 2) 
‘A turn in the road brought us in view of a scene of 
desolation on a magnificent scale. Fire had done its work 
of devastation, and, running up the tangled banks of a 
wild ravine, had penetrated far into the vast recesses of 
the forest. The jagged and charred stems of the pines, 
snapped asunder at various heights—the blackened and 
calcined rocks—the screen of shrivelled spray that hung. 
withered from the half-burnt trees at the line where the 
conflagration had stayed its devouring course, formed a 
spectacle among the most striking that can be conceived. 
‘lhe scene of wreck enabled us to form some faint idea of 
what it must have been when the conflagration was at the 
height of its fury, passing in its conquering strength from 
tree to tree, spreading through the tangled branches, 
climbing in wreaths of flame the tall stems, till it over- 
topped the highest summits—amidst volumes of smoke 
and jets of sparks, and the crackling and roaring of the 
destroying element, and the crash of falling trees, as one 
after another came to the ground.’ 
With one other sketch of forest scenery I close. It is one 
from the vicinity of Hurungerne, and is of Skagastéls-Tind, 
the highest mountain ia Norway, reaching a height of 7670 
English feet, situated in the Koldedal, or Cold Valley :— 
‘It was a snowy walk of ten or twelve miles to Koldedal, 
into which we slid from the fjeld at a frightful velocity 
down a snow-drift. Some fine éends [corresponding to the 
aiguilles of Swiss scenery—pointed rocks projecting to a 
great height] rise over Koldedal. The view from the foot 
of the first descent was inconceivably grand. The clouds 
occasionally concealed the whole horizon, and then, break- 
ing, revealed the jagged peaks of Hurungerne rising above 
them in wild, fantastic confusion, and Skagastéls-Tind. 
Beneath, a bell-shaped snowy valley penetrated into the 
mountains, and was closed by a vast glacier. Almost all] 
the points were black and bare, rising like aiguilles from 
the masses of snow which overspread the lower ranges of 
the fjelds; the summits themselves, though they are from 
