18... FORESTRY. OF NORWAY. , 
The designation fjeld is, according to. Forbes, given to 
extensive plateauz, or table-lands of great, breadth,-and 
generally more or less _ connected | together, though 
occasionally separated by. deep but always narrow valleys... 
As seen from the lowlands they appear mountain ridges— 
mountain ranges they are, but they can. scarcely be called. 
with ‘propriety mountain ridges. ‘They are often, writes _ 
Forbes in his volume entitled Norway and its., Glaciers, 
‘interminable wildernesses, undulating, or varied only by 
craggy heights devoid of majesty, rarely attaining the, , 
snow line, but spotted over with. ungainly patches of, » 
white.’ 
Of the Dovrefjeld graphic descriptions have been given, _ 
by Forbes and also by Bayard Taylor, as well as_ by 
many other tourists, — 
‘They are often so level that upon what may almost be. 
called their summits a coach-and-four, says he, ‘might be 
driven along or across them for many miles did;roads _ 
exist, across which the eye wanders for immense 
distances, overlooking entirely the valleys, which, are 
concealed by their narrowness, and interrupted only by 
undulations of ground, or by,small mountains which rise 
here and there with comparatively little picturesque effort 
above the general level.’ | 
And in another connection he mentions that the. forms . 
of the Norwegian mountains, contrasted with. the Alps, . 
have been aptly enough compared by Wittich—the 
former to the embrasure of a parapet, the latter to a ridge 
and furrow roof, the depressions in the former represent- 
ing the profound gorges which intersect the rocky | 
plateaux; in the latter the usual alternations of moun- 
tain and valley. 
Of the ravines which cut up the plateaux a picture has 
been given in connection with what has been told in 
regard to the Marie Stegen and the Rinkan Foss 
[ante p. 24]. The perpendicular precipice so frequently 
characteristic of the ravine is not unfrequently met with _ 
