174 FORESTRY OF NORWAY. 
away, and that probably by another, and, perbaps, another 
still; as is often found to be the case in making such 
ascents, And he saw little more than peaks of rocks and 
plains of snow, and a portion of the fond, or motherland of 
glaciers, the vast table-land of snow and ice from which 
the numerous glaciers of this region descend. He descended 
and made for the pass that seemed the most likely to be 
the correct one. Of what he saw he writes :— 
‘On reaching the summit a singular scene presented 
itself. At the foot of a vast amphitheatre of snowy moun- 
tain peaks is a gloomy basin of rock, filled with the waters 
of a half-frozen lake. The water comes directly from the 
snow above, and is of a peculiar blue white, semi-opaque, 
London-milk colour, common to such snow water. This 
lake is called the Stiggevand, which, I believe, may be 
translated “Stygian Pool;’ and a better name could 
scarcely be invented, for its gloom and desolate aspect 
would satisfy the imagination of the most dyspeptic and 
bilious of poets. 
‘The hollows, or basins, which occupy a higher level 
than the lake, are filled with snow and with ice formed by 
the melting and re-freezing of the snow. Thus filled up, 
they form great plains, having a surface of virgin snow, 
without a footmark, or a scratch, or spot visible. These 
apparent plains are, however, not quite level, but slope 
towards the rocky precipice rising above the lake. The 
ice sea, pressed forward by the mass above, flows over 
these walls in great bending sheets that reach a short 
way down, and then break off and drop in masses into 
the lake, their broken edges forming a blue cornice fringed 
with icicles, If these walls of the lake shore had suffi- 
cient slope to hold the icy cascade without breaking, 
glaciers would be formed ; or if the supply of breaking 
masses were sufficiently great to overpower the thawing 
below, the basin of the lake would be filled up and become 
continuous with the great ice and snow-fields above, and 
might extend onwards to the spot on which I was standing, 
or even overflow this, and push down the valley up which 
