MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
27 
foreground runs the path of crushed stone resting in the heather on a foun- 
dation of peat that makes it yield like velvet to every footstep. Further 
back rises another seven-hundred-foot cliff of purplish gneiss, almost entirely 
bare. There is little frostwork here. It is too mild under the breath of the 
Atlantic. 
One sees little rock that has fallen from above. A little further the truth 
of this observation is emphasized by the clearness with which a single excep- 
tion stands out on the valley wall; above a light gray scar, below the light 
gray pile into which the falling rock resolved itself. Every flat surface has 
its peaty soil and growth of heather. The rocks are everywhere wet and 
glistening. Down at sea level the rainfall is double that of Michigan, up 
here probably more still. Plants grow on any pretense of soil. Looking 
from the summit landward I estimate the bare rock as forty per cent of the 
landscape here. In every hollow a lake gathers with water plants and mosses 
busy filling all about the border. So if we turn and look below to the bench 
above the restaurant. The heather cover is closer here. And the bog plants 
have come nearer to filling their pool. But green as the whole ground is, 
it has no soil that man can use; only heather and moss can grow upon it. 
Man is confined to the narrow valley, the great upland surface of the land 
has no inhabitants. Northward we shall see more desolation, slopes of 
birch at the waterside, above that heather and over that the desert of bare 
purple rock and snow. 
We turn presently into the Northfiord, passing an occasional group of 
little houses at the .water’s edge. For hour after hour one must estimate 
bare rock the larger part of the landscape. Of what plants are there, only 
a narrow stripe of yellow grass along the fiord edge at the old sea level is of 
use to man. This fiord is some sixty miles in length to hardly three in width. 
It is enclosed in strong slopes descending from snow-spotted uplands two or 
three thousand feet above. In the sunlight it is grand but gloomy more 
often when roofed over tunnel-like by clouds that hang below the summit of 
the walls on either hand. At the fiord head is a mile-square patch of land 
that has inhabitants. It was anciently a delta of mountain streams built 
into the head of the arm of the sea when the land stood a hundred and fifty 
feet lower. Looking back over the fiord from this terrace, the scene is one 
of greater promise for men. Here on the terrace and about the lake above 
368 people dwelled in 1904. The valley has been settled a thousand years. 
The land under such circumstances is very precious. It has no ascertainable 
price. It is not bought or sold. Each point has its own name and the people 
all have that name too. Thus the main settlement Loen has thirteen peasant 
proprietors and “always has had.” Each of these families is named Loen , 
the individuals being distinguished by their Christian names commonly 
with the addition of their father’s name, as Marcus Andersen Loen, Rasmus 
Johansen Loen, Anders Marcussen Loen and so on. Frequently indi- 
viduals are found with the name of a neighbor settlement, but the rarity 
of this denotes fixity of residence through the generations. 
Closer to the shore are more signs of men in the landings where are stored 
the things that come and go in boats, And there is no other approach. 
There is a road up to the lake, there is a steamer on the lake, and the valley 
beyond finally heads up at the glacier and cliffs leading to an upland a mile 
above the sea. All who go up the road come down. The skipper of the 
steamer declines your fare on the up trip. You will come back later, you 
may pay then. If you raise your eyes from the landing they sweep up a long 
slope of birches a little striped by rock and snow falls from a niche in the 
