The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-11-12

! stantlal about Norway ASIDE from
| aer crags ana ice: lumber owners from
Inc cities visiting the mills and seeking
and sorting their logs; engineering par
ties at work upon the endless task OF
bringing the valleys and tiords nearer To-
.sether: geOlOgists and naturalsts lnnu-
| merable. with impoverished stores of
| specimens. but so enthusiastically eNud-
| ing with theories and cOuJectures about
/ the glacier age and the mOraines that no
| peace shall come until their discoveries.
| in book form. finally drift 10 the terminal
! moraines of literature, the great Libraries
| cOb-webbed shelves; and everywhere, the
| frenned amateur photographer pale with
| energy and loss of sleep, and the lean.
| lank, lone. lorn Cycllst, bent with rheu-
| matism, bumped from bronchitis, ana IN
! his scant attire as iucOngruGus a spectacle
as a skirtless ballet dancer dropped among
| Himalayan nights.
| Through the entire length Of the Har-
| danger hord and its lesser outreaching
! fiords there are the most extraordinary
| variety Of scenery possible TO ind IN an
| equal distance Every station has Its
| glen or chasm or wider dal Bach OF
| these pours It's river or tumultuous tor
| rent into the ford. Where the noun
| tains widen out into amphitheaters, there
are the cirCling wales fringed at the top
| by horizon-line of polished or jagged
| rock. with a lesser circle of savage de
! bris below then a feathery rim Of pine
| below this, the emerald of the farms,
with their clusters Of softened gray old
| structures; and then the fCamlng river
shooting from the depths Of the vale, with
the whitish yellow line of the mountain
road beside it and following all It's tortu-
Gus windiugs; and finally, the hamlet
brown and gray, at the very edge OF the
blue waters Of the ford.
Such valley scenes give a sky IS blue as
TUalv's: suggestions of inaccessible and
frozen nights; the misty pearllne tlnts
that lay in Tuscan wales like the rhine Of
ripened grape; a soft and languorous lux
uriance such as half-shrouds and half-re-
yeas the valleys Of Cuba; and all the
mellow qUaintness of Netherland ham
let's. at one glance Where the station
cluster of messy structures set at the
mouth of shadOwy gorge, there are cliffs
not hundreds but thousands of feet above;
a glitterof foam like aCameo-settlng to the
background and now and then, farup the
purpling gorge, q shaft Of gutterlng llght,
as if the focused beauty of some half-hid
upland GALE shot for an instant between
weird. cloud-reaching walls.
Now. for miles we sail between preci-
pieces from 3 LOCO TO 5000 feet in hight.
The silence here is painful. From water
to sky. there is neither branch of tree
nor blade Of grass. Not even wild fowl
scream and circle here and we are told
the water beneath us is deep-deeper far
than the noisy sea outside tine slzCrries-
as the crags are lofty above. Suddenly
we turn and face vale of almost tropical
beauty. Scarcely is this contemplated
before our course carries our sight to a
shore of Crags, with valley line above;
beyond this a feathery line of forest;
then an edge of rock, touched by the
bright sunlight into masses OF FURNISHED
bronze; and far and high beyond, is a
glittering line of quivering sapphire blue,
where the trackless ice-helds of the tolge-
fond seem throbbing and pulsing their
yet fadeless fires in the ghostly upper
light
And so on and on, to Odde-'the tongue
of land when you seem to have come to
the edge-of chaos world; and where the
brown hamlet, low lying, and backed by
gorge, and Crag, and foss, and hight,
looks lazily out from its slumberous inns
and shops back along the blue way YOU
came, upon one of the finest blended scenes
of wave, and mount. and Sky TO be found
in all our good old globe. What is true
of this grandesJ of all Norway's tiOrds is
true, in particular or in more intense and
impressive type, of Trondhjem of Geir-
anger, of Sogne, and of all the lesser
ti0rds.
Trondhiem shows vaster perspective
and drearier reaches Of sight; but still
possesses, its measure of the wOndrous
versatility of Hardanger, while it seldom
provides the tender valley views Geir-
anger is a maze of lovely wales and glens,
of cataraCtS above the clouds, of preci-
pices, cliffs and towering crags, of hamlets
upon mountains with mountains above
these, and of waterfalls, highest, slender
est, tiercesJ and most hlmY in all the
world and so great in number that they
are still unnamed and uncounted.
The Sogne ford cannot but beregarded
as the most stupendous and often appal-
ling continuous spectacle so far accessible
TO the traveller in any part Of the habita-
BILE globe. 1t is practically sea water
way of more than 90 miles in length, and
with branches and ramificatiOns of twice
that distance split through almost solid
mountain walls from 900 to 5000 feet in
hight. It's waters are the deepest of all
the Norwegian fiords while the shores af-
ford infrequent anchorage. If by any
means the water-bed of the SOgne ford
could become dry, tourists could in many
places look upon almost perpendicular
rocks from s, 600 to 10000 feet above their
heads Few valleys open upon the Sogne;
but tremendous chaSms are constantly
appearing. The peasantrY here huddle
together in almost inaccessible places, long
distances apart; and move to and fro be-
tween their tiny hamlets in boats built
with rude sleeping accommodations. At
various places you viii see bits of shelly
ing rock to which their boats are tied at
night, Near these are tiny caves or rock
assures used 1as huts and as kitchens
in these trips overnight duration.
The seen cry grows more grand and i'm
posing as you proceed up the ford, reach
ing perhaps its most somber sublimity in
Nero ford, one of its branches.
Another arm is the Fjaerlands ford
near which are the vastest suow-caves
and ice-helds of Norway and the romantic
village of Balhomen, scene of Frithofs
Saga, where
Birch trees covered the mountain tops; on the
sunny hill slopes
Ripened the golden barley and rye waved
taller than giants
from its extreme eastern branch, the Ar
darls ford, the third great waterfall Of
western Norway, the mighty Nettifos
is reached while through every opening
to the north are seen the gigantic masses
of the Jostedals glacier, the largest in
Europe and covering an area of live hun
dred square miles.
In the amazing multiplicity of these
scenes of beauty and grandeur, there is
one that will remain fadeless in the tray
elcrs memory. 1t is that one when in the
darkless night of these nOthern ATTITUDES.
as your steamer Creeps along down there
in the almost blackeued and abyssmal
silence between these parted mountain
walls you look through their riffs to-
wards heaven, and, knowing the NIGHT