tretches out one
of his fathom-long fingers, and hauls away. Everything is living; man
alone stands and is silenced by--_stop!_

The perspiration oozes out of one's fingers'-ends: one turns and
turns, bows, and knows not one's self, from pure respect for the human
thought which here has iron limbs. And yet the large iron hammer goes
on continually with its heavy strokes: it is as if it said: "Banco,
Banco! many thousand dollars; Banco, pure gain! Banco! Banco!"--Hear
it, as I heard it; see, as I saw!

The old gentleman from Trollhaetta walked up and down in full
contemplation; bent and swung himself about; crept on his knees, and
stuck his head into corners and between the machines, for he would
know everything so exactly; he would see the screw in the propelling
vessels, understand their mechanism and effect under water--and the
water itself poured like hail-drops down his forehead. He fell
unconscious, backwards into my arms, or else he would have been drawn
into the machinery, and been crushed: he looked at me, and pressed my
hand.

"And all this goes on naturally," said he; "simply and comprehensibly.
Ships go against the wind, and against the stream, sail higher than
forests and mountains. The water must raise, steam must drive them!"

"Yes," said I.

"Yes," said he, and again _yes_, with a sigh which I did not then
understand; but, months after, I understood it, and I will at once
make a spring to that time, and we are again at Trollhaetta.

I came here in the autumn, on my return home; stayed some days in this
mighty piece of nature, where busy human life forces its way more and
more in, and, by degrees, transforms the picturesque to the useful
manufactory. Trollhaetta must do her work; saw beams, drive mills,
hammer and break to pieces: one building grows up by the side of the
other, and in half a century hence here will be a city. But that was
not the story.

I came, as I have said, here again in the autumn. I found the same
rushing and roaring, the same din, the same rising and sinking in the
sluices, the same chattering boys who conducted fresh travellers to
the Hell Fall, to the iron-bridge island, and to the inn. I sat here,
and turned over the leaves of books, collected here through a series
of years, in which travellers have inscribed their names, feelings and
thoughts at Trollhaetta--almost always the same astonishment, expressed
in different languages, though generally in Latin: _veni, vidi,
o