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Mountainous ridge after ridge we climbed, but along the wide expanse our eyes could alight on no lake; and only through a chasm, far away between two mountains, the lead-coloured water of the Sogne Fiord momentarily deceived the sight.
Lorimer the languid, Lorimer the lazy, Lorimer who had remained blandly unmoved and drowsy through all the magnificent panorama of the Norwegian coast, including the Sogne Fjord and the toppling peaks of the Justedal glaciers; Lorimer who had slept peacefully in a hammock on deck, even while the yacht was passing under the looming splendors of Melsnipa; Lorimer, now that he had arrived at the Alton Fjord, then at its loveliest in the full glory of the continuous sunshine, developed a new turn of mind, and began to show sudden and abnormal interest in the scenery.
We purchased some very large fish, which were not cod, but very like them; and satisfied with their great likeness to that favourite fish, we ate them with greediness; but the heads being of an abominable bull-dog shape, the cook was ordered to decapitate, before committing them to the pot. On Wednesday morning we entered the Sogne Fiord.
It was an enchanted voyage until we reached the mouth of the Aurlands Fjord, divided from that of Gudvangen by a single rocky buttress 1000 feet high. Beyond this point the watery channel is much broader, and the shores diminish in grandeur as they approach the Sogne Fjord, of which this is but a lateral branch.
Probably nowhere in the world is there anything to approach it in grandeur, for not only are there the great mountains forming the sides of the actual valley in the foreground, but away beyond appears a succession of other mountains, stretching far across the Sogne Fjord, even to the snowy peaks of Jotunheim.
With the decorous conduct of her sex she made not the attempt; but during the hour we wandered about the sleeping village in search of some boatmen to row us back to Auron, we could hear her lowing piteously. We had descended the eastern side of the mountain, and arrived on a southern branch of the Sogne Fiord.
Or, if there be a few days to spare, one can steam across the head of the Sogne Fjord from Gudvangen to Lærdalsören, and thence again take carriole or stolkjærre to the Fillefjeld, and so visit the wildest of Norway's mountain districts, the Jotunheim the Home of the Giants. Everyone has read of the midnight sun and of the sunless winter of the North.
Standing on a solitary patch of snow that spread over the highest point of the mountain we found ourselves on a level plain with the lofty chain of the Reenfjeld, separated from us by a gulf of fifteen miles, at the bottom of which flowed the Sogne Fiord diminished in its wide expanse to a river, and darkened to the sable dye of ebony by the intersecting shadows of numerous mountains.
One can go by steamer from Bergen up the Hardanger Fjord to Eide, and thence drive across the neck of land to the Sogne Fjord, through the finest and most varied scenery imaginable, returning to Bergen, if needs be, by steamer down the Sogne Fjord.
It was a vessel from Bergen bound up the Sogne Fiord for timber; and the crew having seen us buffeted, in such a shattered condition, by the gale, and perceiving by the rig of the cutter, that she was a foreigner, humanely bore down to us; and the mystical song of the sailors was a signal to follow them, which being sung slowly and with unfailing repetition, outlasted the blasts of wind, and gave us the opportunity of catching the words as the two vessels rose on the crests of the waves.
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