With this augury for better days awaiting him, we must conclude our faint outline of an inventor’s trials. Time alone can verify the worth of his thoughts and endeavours. Had he had a more liberal education, or a kindlier vantage-ground for his start in life, than that given in the ranks of an army to scientific talent, he might have been spared some of the cramping hindrances of poverty and bitterness of delayed hope.
He appeared poor, an adventurer, before high official dignitaries too ready at any word of innovation to protect their routine-dulled eyes with the blue spectacles of mistrust, before venturing to look on the unhallowed thing.
THE RUIKAN FOSS.
On the 9th of July we made our excursion to the Ruikan Foss. It was a splendid morning; the great heavy rain clouds that had hung over the valley for several days had all passed away, and the mountains seemed bathed in sunlight. At the foot of the Gousta Fjeld, the highest mountain in Southern Norway, lies the little village of Dalé, where we had taken up our quarters. Down the valley runs the Maan river, which connects two of the great inland seas of Thellemarken, the Mjös Vand, and the Tind Söe: these two lakes are about fourteen miles apart, in which distance the river falls 1275 feet. The Maan river is therefore very rapid and clear as crystal; shut in by lofty mountain ranges, it rushes down the narrow valley, now foaming among the rocks, and now “storming and streaming” among its well-wooded islands.
But the great attraction of this district is the celebrated Ruikan Foss, or “Reeking Fall,” perhaps one of the grandest waterfalls in the world, and second only to one other in Norway, namely, the Voring Foss. At a short distance from the Mjös Vand—the upper of the two lakes—the entire body of the river falls over an awful precipice, seven or eight hundred feet, into a fathomless abyss below.
Of this magnificent fall we had read much, and perhaps imagined more, and it was one of the objects which had attracted us into Thellemarken.
Breakfast was soon over, and preparations made for the start. Bread and cheese was pocketed, flasks filled, pipes lighted, and with sketch-books and sticks in hand we turned our faces up the valley bound for the Ruikan Foss.
For the first three or four miles the road lay beside the bed of the river, which ran on our left, at times through avenues of overhanging birches, which formed a pleasant shade from the great heat of the morning sun. By the roadside the monkshood grows most plentifully—in fact, this poisonous plant is one of the commonest in Norway. After walking about an hour we began to ascend, and, crossing the bed of a torrent, had a most splendid view down the valley of the Gousta Fjeld. The summit of this mountain consists of a long ridge covered with eternal snow. “The edge of the ridge,” says a traveller, “is so narrow that one might sit astride the top, each leg hanging over a descent of upwards of 5000 feet.” From Dalé we had merely seen the flat side, but now, owing to the curve of the valley, we had a view of the end of the ridge; it was certainly very magnificent, like a sharp-pointed cone, or pinnacle. Far above the valley, the summit stood out against the clear blue sky.
From this point we kept gradually ascending, the river roaring several hundred feet below in a rocky narrow channel. Here there were none of those runs where the great trout lie; the entire
