he impending rock on the other side.
How he had descended I could not perceive; nothing like human footsteps
appeared, and the horrific crags seemed to bid defiance even to the
goat's activity. It looked like an abode only fit for the eagle, though
in its crevices some pines darted up their spiral heads; but they only
grew near the cascade, everywhere else sterility itself reigned with
dreary grandeur; for the huge grey massy rocks, which probably had been
torn asunder by some dreadful convulsion of nature, had not even their
first covering of a little cleaving moss. There were so many appearances
to excite the idea of chaos, that, instead of admiring the canal and the
works, great as they are termed, and little as they appear, I could not
help regretting that such a noble scene had not been left in all its
solitary sublimity. Amidst the awful roaring of the impetuous torrents,
the noise of human instruments and the bustle of workmen, even the
blowing up of the rocks when grand masses trembled in the darkened air,
only resembled the insignificant sport of children.

One fall of water, partly made by art, when they were attempting to
construct sluices, had an uncommonly grand effect; the water precipitated
itself with immense velocity down a perpendicular, at least fifty or
sixty yards, into a gulf, so concealed by the foam as to give full play
to the fancy. There was a continual uproar. I stood on a rock to
observe it, a kind of bridge formed by nature, nearly on a level with the
commencement of the fall. After musing by it a long time I turned
towards the other side, and saw a gentle stream stray calmly out. I
should have concluded that it had no communication with the torrent had I
not seen a huge log that fell headlong down the cascade steal peacefully
into the purling stream.

I retired from these wild scenes with regret to a miserable inn, and next
morning returned to Gothenburg, to prepare for my journey to Copenhagen.

I was sorry to leave Gothenburg without travelling farther into Sweden,
yet I imagine I should only have seen a romantic country thinly
inhabited, and these inhabitants struggling with poverty. The Norwegian
peasantry, mostly independent, have a rough kind of frankness in their
manner; but the Swedish, rendered more abject by misery, have a degree of
politeness in their address which, though it may sometimes border on
insincerity, is oftener the effect of a broken spirit, rather softened