MOUNTAIN PLATEAUX AND MOUNTAIN RAVINES, 33 
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 clitfs 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 
