The scene was pretty and picturesque, but
rather disfigured by the progress of Norwegian civilization. Passing
numerous thriving farms in the full season of harvest, the road
winding pleasantly along the hill-side to the right, the foaming
waters of the Logen deep down in the valley to the left, we at length
reached the entrance of the Gudbransdalen--that beautiful and fertile
valley, which stretches all the way up the course of the Logen to the
Dovre Fjeld, a distance of a hundred and sixty-eight miles from
Lillehammer. It would be an endless task to undertake a description of
the beauties of this valley. From station to station it is a continued
panorama of dashing waterfalls, towering mountains, green slopes, pine
forests overtopping the cliffs, rich and thriving farms, with
innumerable log cottages perched up among the cliffs, and wild and
rugged defiles through which the road passes, sometimes overhung by
shrubbery for miles at a stretch. Flying along the smoothly-graded
highway at a rapid rate; independent of all the world except your
horse and boy; the bright sunshine glimmering through the trees; the
music of the wild waters falling pleasantly on your ear; each turn of
the road opening out something rich, new, and strange; the fresh
mountain air invigorating every fibre of your frame; renewed youth and
health beginning to glow upon your cheeks; digestion performing its
functions without a pang or a hint of remonstrance; kind, genial,
open-hearted people wherever you stop--is it not an episode in life
worth enjoying? The valley of the Logen must surely be a paradise (in
summer) for invalids.

At each station the traveler is furnished with a stunted little boy
called the skydskaarl, usually clothed in the cast-off rags of his
great-grandfather; his head ornamented by a flaming red night-cap, and
his feet either bare or the next thing to it; his hair standing out in
every direction like a mop dyed in whitewash and yellow ochre, and his
face and hands freckled and sunburned, and not very clean, while his
manners are any thing but cultivated. This remarkable boy sits on a
board behind the cariole, and drives it back to the station from which
it starts. He is regarded somewhat in the light of a high public
functionary by his contemporary ragamuffins, having been promoted from
the fields or the barn-yard to the honorable position of skydskaarl.
His countenance is marked by the lines of premature care and
responsibili