danger Fjord, sometimes on horseback, sometimes on my back, in order to have something to show people after so long an absence, and ornament the inside of a London house in Portman Square. How I love to hear the intellectual conversation of some sportsmen, and to watch men turning out for sport as the one sole and only business of this life, all in correct horse, dog, and gaiter style! showing that selfishness and very natural contempt for other people's interests, who may not care so much for sport, or may prevent it if coming in their way! We slept that night in a Saetter or farmhouse among the mountains: from which I sent off Lars the next day early, to get everything ready beforehand for immediate departure, now that winter had commenced, and came on myself the day after with another man, who owned a horse, but had never been before this on the mountains-in fact I had to show the way for And I nine hours, guiding him over a pass. cannot say much for the horses in Norway, compared to those of Iceland, having tried more than one upon the mountains and found them comparatively unable to get on. Striking out after this for a new region, in order to come down upon the Hardanger Fjord, I left the shooting-box described already with a horse and three men, snow being heavy on the house top and so far as the eye could perceive on every side. It was Arctic winter, and a glorious landscape for miles and miles in every direction. But that night was spent, after a whole day's forced march over the frozen regions, in a deserted Saetter where we did not arrive till very late, indeed, not until darkness had set in, when we did not know exactly where to find this abandoned, lonely habitation, and at last only found it after struggling for some distance in a marsh; then had to continue next day over quaking fens and Irish bog for fourteen miles, our horse very often wallowing deep in the mire ; which made it a very tedious business until we came to a respectable farm called Maurset, where we rested for an hour. I pushed on from here to another farmhouse, close by the gigantic waterfall of Voringfoss, and slept that night within sound of its roar. On the day after, as we beheld this wonder of nature with its clouds of thick white spray, standing very near its base, our voices were scarcely to be heard for the deafening uproar which it made, while we shivered for the icy sensation produced by a cold and gusty draught, by currents of air from the falling of this water; and the very ground appeared to shake under our feet, while I continued gazing with a sense of awe and humiliation upon this lion of Norway, 900 feet high, allowed to be the highest waterfall in Europe. Deeply situated in a dark ravine, between precipices so perpendicular that no vegetation can grow upon their face, this monster, pouring and roaring at this moment and for ever, has worn away for itself a deep fissure between two precipices of great height, and will wear it deeper still. While such is the peculiar beauty of this waterfall in winter-time, when snows have gathered thick around, and huge icicles in large numbers, like stalactites, fringe every terrace upon that gloomy chasm's walls, that scarcely will any phenomenon be found in nature more magnificent, extraordinary, or superb. We arrived at the corner of that winding narrow bay, Hardanger Fjord, and took the Fjord steamer to Bergen, from which I returned to England by the usual way, remaining late on deck to contemplate the cliffs of this beloved country till they were out of sight. And whether it may be the writer's destiny to travel next in Egypt or Abyssinia, Palestine, Arabia or Persia, Tartary or Circassia, he will often remember and with deep affection the time spent early in these countries of the North-however badly, for want |