28 
TENTH REPORT. 
cliff, then up a steep brown face of rock to a platform at three thousand 
four hundred feet above the fiord steamer at the landing. If we take the 
camera and climb, in five hours we may stand above and see the whole valley 
spread out in bird’s eye view. Under us the fiord, the terrace on which 
stand the scattered houses of Loen and the road beside the river to the lake,' 
three miles away. 
Both lake and fiord are of fresh water here, tho the tide rises and falls 
four or five feet twice each day. No salt can be tasted in the fiord for many 
miles toward the sea. It is in such spots as this on each of the branches 
into which the fiord divides at its head that all the inhabitants of this part 
of the kingdom must live. The area here is small, the most distant wall 
being barely twelve miles away, but very hazy and blue with the water 
vapor in the air. If we walk along the road we find the scene park-like 
with the mountain walls always towering far above the trees, while the 
far-from-silent river alongside puts a good deal of action into the scene, 
especially on the hot days, when the ice above melts freely. During much 
of this walk we have a summit in the background six thousand six hundred 
feet above us, a mount Washington with its feet at sea level. Presently 
we pass the last fall and come to the level of Loen Lake. A glance back 
shows us the cliff we just ascended with its crest now above the clouds. 
Just before us is a tiny farm with all its lands. Over across the foot of the 
lake is a yet tinier one. This is known as a one man place. When the son 
was grown he had to emigrate. All the farm lands are in sight. They are 
not cultivated by machinery. Part of the water that leaps so abundantly 
from above is utilized on one farm for a fulling mill, part of it for the farm 
grindstone, or tumbling wastefully over the grass when the sluice is closed. 
There is a good deal of Avood in the valley on all the lower slopes. From 
this the tips of the birches are cut when tender and dried to eke out the 
scanty store of winter hay. Further back the Scotch spruce is still abun- 
dant. Houses here are of course of wood and though essentially log ( abins 
that have been tamed by a thousand years of experiment into a curious affair 
of dressed and dovetailed timbers. It is made of planks four inches thick, 
and tonguecl each to the one above. There is no frame. The planks are 
dovetailed together at the corners, and partitions and floors are dovetailed 
through the solid sides. When the windows are sawed out, a slab is nailed 
across the space between them to hold the planks there together until they 
are supported by nailing to the window frame. Outside these planks goes 
an outer sheathing of inch-thick clap-boards. When roofed with slate 
such a house gives an effect much like that of our frame buildings. The 
mere log cabin only occurs on the mountain pastures where the cows pasture 
through the summer and the girls go up daily from the fiordside to care for 
the milk. These and the poorer houses are roofed with sod, often underlaid 
by birch bark to keep the rafters from rotting. The better buildings are 
everywhere roofed with red tile. 
The brick and stucco houses of the cities are often of excellent design. 
Above the Loen Lake where ice and snow abound the slopes are full of the 
work of ice, wrecking and burrowing. This happens not merely at the sum- 
mit of the cliff where the ice must fall over the edge, but at every point on 
the slope where it rests there a great hole is dug. Little isolated glaciers 
that lie high up on the mountain side are always margined on the upper side 
by a cliff one or two hundred feet high as if showing how much the ice has re- 
cently sunk itself into the rock. Just below, if we are above the level where 
ice sometimes melts, lies the rough heap of moraine, big as the glacier itself 
