Omaha daily bee., 1893-11-12

attire as homogeneous q spectacle as a skirt
less ballet dancer among Himalayau
heights.
beautiful Wales and Giens.
Through tho entire length of the Har-
danger ford and its lesser outreachiug
upper lords there are the most extraordinary
variety of scenery possible to find in an
equal distance. Every station has its glen
or chasm or wider DIAL Each OF these pours
its river or tumultuous torrent into the ford.
Where the mountains widen out into amphi-
theaters, there are the circling Wales fringed
AT the top by n borizon-lino of polished or
Jagged rock, with n lesser circle of savage
debris below; then q f~eathery RIM of pine;
below this the emerald of the farms, with
their clusters of softened gray old struc-
lures, and then the foaming river shooting
from tho depths of the vale, with the whit.
lsh yellow line of the mountain road beside
IL ana following all its tortuous windings,
aud finally the hamlet, brown and gray. at
the very edge of the blue waters OF the ford.
Such valley scenes give a sky as blue as
Italy's; suggestions of inaccessible and
frozen heights; the misty ~pearlino tints that
lay IN Tuscan wales like the rime of ripened
grape; u soft aud dangerous luxuriauce such
as half shrouds and half reveals the valleys
OF Cuba, and all the mellow quaiutness of
Netherland hamlets at one glance. Where
the station" cluster of messy structures
StJS az tne InOuJn Oh SnauOwy gorge. there
are cliffs not hundreds but thousands of feet
above, a glitter of foam like u cameo setting
TO tho black background, and now and then
far up the purpling gorge a shaft of glitter
Ing light, as If the focused beauty of some
half-hid upland dale shot for an instant be-
tween weird, cloud-reaching walls.
Now for miles we sail between precipices
from 5000 to 5000 feet in height. The
silence hero Is painful. From water to sky
there is neither branch of tree nor blade of
y Q Nnt ntn mill fAYwl e,,,An n.t
circle here; and we are told the water
beneath us is deep-deeper far than the
noisy sea outside the skerries--as the craga
are lofty above. Suddenly we turn and
face n vale OF almost tropical beauty.
Scarcely is this contemplated before our
course carries our sight to u shore of crags
with a valley line above; beyond this a
feathery line of forest than an edge of rock
touched by the bright sunlight into masses
OF FURNISHED bronze; ana far and high be-
You'd isl glittering line Of quivering sap.
phire blue where the trackless ice fields OF
the Folgefond seem throbbing and pulsing
their yet fadeless fires in the ghostly upper
light.
And 50 on and on, to Odde--"the tongue of
land" where you seem to lave come to the
edge of chaos-world; and where the brown
hamlet, low lying and backed by gorge and
crag and foss and height, looks lazily out
from its slumbrous 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 grandest of all Nor
ways fiords Is true, in particular or in more
intense and impressive type, of Troudhjem,
OF Geiranger, of Sogne and of all the lesser
iiords.
Trondhjem shows vaster perspectives and
drearier reaches of sight; but still possesses
its measure of the wondrous versatility of
Hardanger, while it seldom provides the
tender valley views. Geiranger is a maze of
lovely Wales and glens, of cataracts above
the clouds, of precipices, cliffs and towering
crags, of ha.nlets upon mountains with
mountains above these, and of waterfalls,
highest, slcnderest, tiercest and most tlmy
in all the world, and 50 great in number that
they are still unnamed and uncountcd. .
Stupendous Sogne Fiord.
The Sogne ford cannot but be regarded
as the most stupendous and often appalling
continuous spectacle so far accessible to the
Traveller in any part of the habitable globe.
II is practically a sea waterway of more
than 100 miles in length, and with branches
and ramifications of twice that distance
split through almost solid mountain walls
from 1000 to 5000 feet in height. Its
waters are the deepest of all the Norwegian
tiords, while the shores afford infrequent
anchorage. If by any means the waterbed
of the Sogne ford could become dry
tourists could in many places look upon
almost perpendicular rocks from 5000 to
10, 900 feet above their heads. Few valleys
open upon the Songe, but tremendous
chasms are constantly appearing. The
peasuntry here huddle in almost inacces-
sible places, long distances apart, and
move to and fro between their tiny hamlets
in boats built with rude sleeping
dations. AT various places you will see bits
of shelving rock. to which their boats are
tied at night. Near these are tiny caves or
rock assures used as huts and as kitchens
in these trips OF overnight duration.
Tit scenery grows more grand and i'm
posing as you proceed up the ford. reaching
perhaps its most somber sublimity in the
N9ro ford, one of its branches. Another
arm is the Fiaerlands ford, near which are
the vastest snow caves and ice fields of Nor
way and the romantic village of Balholmen,
scene of Frithof's Saga. where
Birch trees covered the mountain tops; on the
sunny hill slopes
Ripened the golden barley, and rye waved
taller than giants
and from its extreme eastern branch, the
Ardals ford, the third great waterfall of
western Norway, the mighty Vettifos 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 800 square miles.
In the amazing multiplicity OF these scenes
of beauty and grandeur there is one that
will remain fadeless in the travellers mem
DRY. 1t is that one when in tho darkless
night of these northern ATTITUDES as your
steamer creeps along down there in the al
most Dlackened and nbyssmal silence be-
tween these parted mountain walls, you look
through their riffs toward heaven, and,
knowing the nighttime hour, are given an
indetinab BILE hint. in the splendor of the light
still lingering tenderly upon mountain peaks,
of that promised region of endless morning
andS. EDGAR Il. WAKENTAN.