The Argosy — page 300: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

About Norway. 283 of Lom, dating back to the thirteenth century, built of resinous pine wood in the Byzantine style, and tarred over from time to time until the wood has become hard as iron and almost imperishable. But we could not visit it, what had still to be done would admit of no delay on the road. As it was, the shadows were lengthening, and that peculiar look was creeping over the sky, which announces as surely as a sun-dial that the day is on the wane. It was now my turn to receive the burden of leadership, and though perfectly helpless and innocent, I very soon felt myself quite a miserable culprit. Do what I would, my horse would not go beyond a snail’s pace: he did not even walk, but crawled. In truth it was difficult to wish him to do anything more lively up this tremendous ascent. But hungry and weary—I cannot conclude a harrowing picture by adding footsore—it was no doubt exasperating to A., whose animal, with the perverseness of Norwegian horses, required as much holding in as mine did urging. Yet the affliction had to be endured. For my own part heroically, for at every turn fresh beauties disclosed themselves or old ones showed up in a new aspect. Pine-clad hills: a view more and more extended as we neared the summit: a rushing torrent below us, into which we could look as into a shuddering depth by simply leaning to the left and gazing breathlessly at the living, leaping torrent. To our tight, treés clothed the mountain, and the eye could wander up into the depths of tangle and briar, the slanting shadows thrown by the sun, the gloom beyond, into which no sight could penetrate. Ahead of us we could see but a very short distance, so short and steep were the windings ; so that the pleasures of hope—that every turn would prove the last—accompanied us on our way. We gained the summit at last, and were rewarded by a magnificent view of mountain ranges, range upon range, snow hills in the distance, far as the eye could reach. Below, stretched the great valley, with its plains and villages, its lakes opening out, on which small islands and trees and ducks disported themselves. ‘This Valley of Valders is one of the grandest and most extensive views in Norway, with its vast range, its far-away snow-capped mountains, its repose and solemn solitude. And now the mountain we had just ascended seemed literally to laugh at us, for no sooner had we gained the summit on the one side than we had to commence a descent upon the other. Down we went, by the same winding process— zigzag paths, cut and cleared out of the mountain. But if we had ascended deliberately, we came down at a speed which had in it a mixture of compensation, recklessness, and exhilaration, at once de- lightful and renovating. In the far distance we could just see the snow-mountains of Jotunheim, and passed on as quickly as possible to the next station, Frydenlund. This was ten and a half miles from the last station, Vold, and we had been very little short of three hours in accomplishing the distance. CoOnmicboooks (CO