306 Rev. U. F. Borgeserfs Description of Vettie's Giel, 
abyss ; above you the high mountain ridge hanging over your 
head, below the more frightful steep sinking perpendicularly 
from your feet: on the opposite side of the Giel, the wildest 
torrents tumbling down hundreds of fathoms ; whilst at the bot- 
tom, the river foaming and roaring, with a deafening sound, 
rushed on with the rapidity of an arrow, and the road you had 
to go, bent still far upon the sides of the precipice which hung 
over it : in short, you saw nothing but Nature in her terrors : I 
involuntarily shut my eyes ; my heart beat ; and, that I might 
not be overpowered by these sensations, I stood up, to expose 
myself to new dangers. I asked my guides if any body had 
ever come to mischief on this way. They recollected only one 
person, who, with a knapsack of birch-bark on his back, by a 
false step, had tumbled over from about the very spot where we 
were standing. From an irresistible apprehension that I might 
be the second, I pushed forward immediately from such a place, 
but yet I found no safer way. 
It began now to rain, and as the part of the path on which 
we were was considered as dangerous, from stones that tumble 
down, we made all the speed we could. The bottom of the 
Giel began at last to widen a little ; and at Holifoss, about half 
a quarter of a mile from Vettie, (three quarters English), it be- 
comes about 150 paces broad. In other places it is never above 
30 ells broad, and in some places not more than 6 or 7. Here 
my guide Civind left me, and went back alone with his axe, of 
which he had made such good use, telling me, that now all the 
difficulties of the way were past ; and they were so in compari- 
son of those we had come through. 
Holiefoss is a fall in Utledal River itself, of no great height, 
but of a force which you scarcely find in any other fall, and ac- 
companied with a noise which deafens the ear. A mountain 
rock has here set itself fast in the bottom of the Giel : the river 
has been forced to dig itself a narrow passage between this rock 
and the high mountain precipice, between which it rushes for- 
ward with such irresistible violence, that stones thrown into it, 
or tumbling from the side of the mountain, are carried down on 
its surface. 
It rained now so hard, that the water ran across our path : 
I quickened my pace, to reach the end of this fatiguing and 
