e danger. The very knot bore the combined neatness and strength of
female ingenuity, and its complication looked endless as conjugal love.

The Norwegian, our three selves, and King, formed the whole party. Our
ascent of the mountain, I need scarcely say, put the sinews of our
thighs to a severe test; and the higher we mounted, the more frequent
were the expressions of fatigue. When we had clambered a quarter of the
way, we came suddenly upon two sheds built of wood, and appropriated to
the use of a little girl and half a hundred pigs. I do not know whether
the swine squeaked their surprise more at seeing us, than the cheerless
child looked it. King, who had been ailing occasionally for some days,
now fell to the rear, and said, that, he was incompetent to proceed any
farther, and the permission to descend, which he solicited, was granted.

All larger vegetation now began gradually to disappear, and though I had
hardly marked the trees dwindling from the cherry to the filbert, and
then to long tufts of grass, the bare rocks strewed over an endless
tract of gravel made me stop and look about. When I cast my eyes above,
the mountains still towered half a mile higher, and gazing downwards I
could see the different kinds of trees and shrubs changing in size and
colour of their foliage, as the space between me and the low lands
increased. I do not remember that I had ever exceeded in elevation the
point to which I had now risen; and perhaps the appearance of the
valleys, the water, and habitations of men might have been more novel
than to persons who are accustomed to crawl to the tops of mountains. I
must confess I remained perfectly lost in thought for some minutes; nor
did I ever feel, or could imagine so distinctly, how the stupendous and
neglected works of creation are blended with the truest beauty; for,
seen from the very mountains on which I stood, so rough, so barren, so
bleak, the same rugged, straggling rocks, scattered over the opposite
mountain, seemed soft as velvet and more delicate than the finished
lines of a miniature.

Beneath the dark, blue surface of the Fiord I could discover shoals and
rocks for which the mariner had sought in vain, and for many miles along
the shore the shelving land showed, with a faint yellow tinge, the
distance it stretched under the water that was otherwise of a deep azure
shade. When from the deeply-dyed cerulean water, the valley with its
different green colours of tree and gra