A Summer Holiday in Scandinavia

8th August. -- At eight o'clock in the morning it was still raining, so I was the only one who made any explorations. The river is approached through a short distance of wet, marshy meadows, cut up by innumerable springs and dotted over with clumps of tall grass and reeds, the very Eldorado of a snipe-shooter, I should think. After these moist meadows there occurs a thick belt of fir trees and low shrubs, which extends down to the water's-edge, and renders fly-fishing difficult, if, indeed, at all possible.

Eleven o'clock, breakfast being over, saw us starting in a pleasant gleam of sunshine. Our road was, if conceivable, through even finer scenery than we had yet witnessed. The highway for a considerable part of the stage ran along the base of stupendous dark-grey cliffs. The only vegetable life upon these bare walls of rock is a scanty growth of a small, smooth-leaved, blue-berried shrub (whose scientific name, I am ashamed to say, is unknown to me) and dwarf pine trees. These latter seem to grow anywhere; they scorn the luxury of having earth for their roots, and spread the naked, gaunt branches with which they are sparingly bedecked, over the face of the cliff in a very strange manner. A tree of this kind will spring from a dry crack, in a rock hardly large enough to admit a man's fist; and will flourish there, and "wax great in its strength," becoming perhaps, if taller than its neighbors and on a high peak, a landmark known to every cottager and huntsman for sixty miles round.

During the first part of the journey we lighted upon an extraordinary scene in the bed of a river over which we passed. The banks of the stream were very steep, and the little water the summer's heat had left trickled down the watercourse in a single silver thread. The road was crossed by a bridge, and under this bridge the river passed through a narrow gateway of rocks. Against these sides, when the water was at flood, two or three pine logs had become caught, and lying crosswise had formed an impassable wall to all other logs coming down. As a natural consequence, a great "block" had taken place just under the bridge, and the mass had extended farther and farther up the stream during the time there was any water in the river, making confusion worse confounded; till now that all the water was gone and everything left bare, the scene was unique. I know of nothing it could be compared to. A perfect forest of bare white poles, some of them standing straight up on end -- pressed into that position by the weight of those behind -- others horizontally stretched from rock to rock, some of them split in two, or bent double, and the whole mass, looking so compact that it seemed feasible, if the requisite strength were present, to lift it solidly from its rocky surroundings. The owner of these logs must have been a novice in the art of timber carriage, or an extremely rash person to try to pass his wood through such a needle's eye without any of the necessary precautions, and his loss must be considerable; for, as far as 1 could see, he had spoilt the river above the bridge as a means of conveyance for pine logs. P. asked his skyds-carl if it would be possible to disperse such a very unpleasant obstruction as this under the bridge; but he either did not know, or did not understand, for he only laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

This was a very long stage, and although Bennett and Murray both make it one journey from Frydenlund to Fagernoes, we stopped twice, once to rest the horses, and again to harness fresh ones. Our first halt was at a small roadside house, where our boy told us it was customary and necessary to stop for fifteen minutes. We accordingly descended and stretched our limbs while making a small lunch of some very good beer supplied by the landlady, biscuits from our knapsacks, and the blue sweet berries (which we first learned were edible here) from the unknown myrtle-like plant I have spoken of before. M. soon won the undying affections of a curly-headed little baby -- got up very much in the Scotch fashion -- who was extremely proud of a big waistcoat with silver buttons which he wore, and which reached from his neck to his knees -- by presenting him with