158 
WILD NORWAY. 
particular one as the situation was awkward, the road 
being a mere shelf on the mountain-side with a rock- 
w r all on the left; on the right, some hundreds of feet 
below, an unseen torrent thundered in its deep-cut bed. 
Luckily, we all remained on the shelf, though sliding 
perilously near the brink. 
For the last nine miles there was no road, and we 
proceeded on foot, the baggage deftly roped on ponies ; 
but we had to wait a couple of hours while the said 
ponies were being caught in the woods. 
Our new home, a hamlet of three log-huts and some 
hay-sheds, each propped on rough stone pillars, stood at 
a considerable elevation, commanding an infinite pros¬ 
pect of pine-forests stretching in alternate rise and fall 
to the distant horizon, where snow-capped ridges marked 
the borders of Sweden. All night long the chorus of 
redwings serenaded us, and in the small hours willow- 
grouse began to “bee” and cackle in the birch-scrub 
above. By day, the drawl of the brambling and the 
wild carol of ring-ouzel, far up the hill, enlivened the 
solitude, while, by the riverside, the warble of willow- 
wren and sandpiper was incessant. 
Half a league beyond, commenced a long narrow 
lake, or rather a chain of linked lakes connected by in¬ 
tervening lengths of river—it was difficult to say where 
lake began or river ended, so imperceptibly did they 
merge one into the other. The lake-like parts were too 
broad to fish from the bank, and wading proved un¬ 
satisfactory ; but each at its upper extremity, towards 
its confluence with the river, afforded one of these 
ambrosial stretches that one may dream of, but seldom 
finds. Here, as the width contracted, it was possible, by 
