308 Rev. U. F. Borgesen's Description of Ve tile’s Giel, 
church myself, when Father * shall lead me in. — I could not 
but think highly of her courage, her cheerfulness and composure. 
The goodman told me, that at the best season in summer the 
Giel can be traversed by a horse ; and that then every thing is 
tli us brought to the house, on the back of his own horse, who is 
accustomed to this road. One is less surprised at this, when he 
sees the lightnessof the small Leirdal horses, and their most uncom- 
mon sure-footedness, by which they can go on the smallest paths, 
on the side of the most fearful precipices, setting one foot before 
another, in such a manner that no path can be too small for 
them. From the farm of Vettie, the Giel is continued upward, 
in a stretch of three miles, so that the whole length of it is more 
than four miles and a half (more than thirty English miles). 
Above Vettie farm, the goodman told me, it was more narrow, 
more difficult, and more frightful, than the part of it which I 
had seen. He and his people had often to go up that way for 
small timber, and other things necessary on the farm. On the 
sides of it, too, were the finest valley and mountain pastures, of 
the greatest value to their rearing of cattle. Their corn was 
sometimes destroyed in harvest by frost. For more than half 
the year, the two families living on this farm, the farmer him- 
self, and his houseman, are cut off from all other human inter- 
course. In winter, the ordinary path is impassable from snow 
and ice, and especially from those frequent columns which leave 
traces of themselves a long way on in the summer, because the 
sun's rays, resting but a short time over this long, monstrous 
gulf, it is seldom before the month of July that this ice is all 
away. For a short time in winter, when the river Utledal is 
frozen, there may be a passage along the bottom of the Giel, but 
not without danger from die avalanches, which, with tremendous 
violence, tumble down into the deep ; the very air of which over- 
throws every thing. In the end of harvest and the spring, all 
approach to and from Vettie is barred ; in the end of harvest 
particularly, from the falling of earth and stones, which are then 
loosened by the frequent rains. 
* Meaning the clergyman to whom she was speaking. It is still the custom, 
in the remote and simple districts of Norway, that when a woman goes first to 
church after her confinement, the parish clergyman meets her at the door, and leads 
her into church. 
