104 THE KING'S MIRROR 



on the mountain side nothing of all that walks the earth 

 can escape the swift movements of the man who is shod 

 with such boards. But as soon as he removes the boards 

 from his feet, he is no more agile than any other man. 

 In other places, where men are not trained to such arts, 

 it would be difficult to find a man, no matter how swift, 

 who would not lose all his fleetness if such pieces of wood 

 as we have talked about were bound to his feet. We, 

 however, have sure information and, when snow lies in 

 winter, have opportunity to see men in plenty who are 

 expert in this art. 



Not long since, we mentioned a certain fact which 

 must be thought exceedingly strange elsewhere, as it 

 runs wholly counter to the order which holds good in 

 most places with respect to the change from night to 

 day, namely, that here the sun shines as bright and fair 

 and with as much warmth by night as by day through 

 a large part of the summer. 



In our own country, in More, there is a bog called the 

 Bjarkudal bog, which must also seem wonderful: for 

 every sort of wood that is thrown into it and left there 

 three winters loses its nature as wood and turns into 

 stone.* If it is thrown upon the fire, it will glow like 

 stone, though before it would have burned like wood. 

 I have seen and handled many such stones of which the 

 half that rose above the mire was wooden, while the 

 part submerged in the bog was wholly petrified. Now 

 we must call that a marvel, for the bog is located in a 



* The " Birchdale " bog seems to be a myth; but that stories of such a marvel 

 were current is evident from a statement by Giraldus Cambrensis, who has 

 heard that there was such a bog in Norway. Opera, V, 86. More is an old 

 Norwegian shire lying to the west of Trondhjem along the coast. 



