140 FORESTRY _OF NORWAY. 
you were sailing on a river. The scenery at times is 
extremely fine. The greater part of the country 1s 
uninhabited; now and then the sea is so completely 
land-locked that it appears as if the journey was ended, 
when suddenly comes into view an opening, and another 
broad expanse of water stretches in the distance; the 
channel is sometimes so narrow and tortuous that the 
vessel almost touches the rocks. 
‘In about six hours from Bergen the entrance to the- 
Sogne is reached, where it is six or seven miles wide. 
Skirting the southern shore, you pass a grand mass of rocks, 
The Sognefest—the Castle of the Sogne—is very bold in 
its outlines, and apparently forming two sides of a square. 
The scenery spread before the traveller is superb, a pano- 
rama ever changing in its views of snow-topped mountains: 
in the north are the Justedal glaciers, towering mountains 
in the. east, in the south the snow-fields of Fresvik. The 
vegetation improves as you penetrate inland; the bases of 
the mountains and hills are clad with woods. Rennes 
The valleys by the fiords are often quite fertile and well- 
cultivated, contrasting singularly with the barren moun- 
tains which surround them. From the water they appear 
to form an oval basin with a ravine at the end, towards 
which the mountain sides slope gently, evidently hollowed 
by the.agency of ice and water. Sometimes two ravines 
enter the valley, like radiating branches. At the base of 
the mountains the terraces rise one above another to the 
number of three or four. 
‘ At about sixty miles from its entrance the Sogne seems 
suddenly to end at the base ofa high mountain; it sharply 
turns northward, and the island of Kvamsoe is passed, and 
a few miles further the main fiord runs once more east- 
ward, while to the north is the entrance of Fjaerland, the 
first large branch of the Sogne. 
‘The steamer stops at the thrifty hamlet of Balholmen. 
opposite to which is Vangsnaes, the scene of Frithiof’s 
Saga. Sombre is the Fjaerland, with its mountains, 
glaciers, and its wild scenery. Streams, fed by the melted 
