NATURAL HISTORY of 'NORWAY. 95 



the execution of traitors, rebels, chiefs of feditions, and the like 

 pefts of fociety; they were thrown down alive to be dafhed by 

 the boifterous waters againft the points of the rocks, that they 

 might perifh in a tumult, by a violence analogous to that, to 

 which they had mitigated others; a punifhment, which, however 

 fevere, muft be owned to have been very adequate and emblema- 

 tical. The Egyptian water-falls or cataracts, mentioned by Pliny, 

 were probably not fo remarkable as thefe, and fome others, in 

 Norway, the fall of them from the rocks not exceeding feven or 

 eight feet. And as the noife of our cataracts, how great foever> 

 has never yet deprived any one of the fenfe of hearing, Cicero's 

 account of the Egyptian Catadupa, may be confidered as viiion- 

 ary * ; though the learned Dr. Richard Pocock, who in his defcrip- 

 tion of the Eaft, animadverts on this account, may not have recol- 

 lected other and larger cataracts, which may be further up the 

 country. • 



SECT. XV. 



The bridges over the rivers in Norway, to the beft of my j^, ^ 

 knowledge* are not any where walled, but framed merely of tim- J e a £prif?nJ 

 ber, of which are made the ftone-cafes ; thefe are large and qua- conftru&on. 

 drangular, and ferve as pillars or fupporters, being filled with 

 ftones in. order to fettle them. The largeft of this kind, here- 

 abouts, is the bridge of Sunde in Guldbrandfdale, where the water of 

 the Great Mioes, which at firft is called Oten and Laagen, begins 

 to increafe. This bridge, of which it is faid that it is never R- 

 nifhed, fome repairs being continually neceffary, is a thoufand paces 

 long, and confifb of forty-three Stone Cafes. Here in the diocefe 

 of Bergen, where carriages can be very little ufed, it is not thought 

 worth the while to build ftrong and lafring bridges. In many places, 

 the manner of their conilruction is thus; where the narrownefs and 

 rapidity of the current will not admit of finking any ftone cafes, 

 thick mafts are laid on each fide of the more, with the thickeit 

 end fattened to the rocks of the mountains; one maft being thus 

 laid in the water, another is placed upon it, reaching a fathom be- 

 yond it, and then a third or fourth in the like progreflion to the 



* Ubi Nilus ad ilia, quse catadupa nominantur, prsecipitat ex altiffimis montibus, 

 ea gens, quse ilium locum accolit, propter magnitudinem foni, fenfu audiendi caret. 

 Somn. Scipion. 5. 



C c middle 



