At Strande Fjord, one of these lovely lakes, which was shut in by a dark background of pine-clad mountains, whose rugged sides were furrowed with deep torrents and white lines of waterfalls, our travellers found in the pleasant station-house a party of seven English ladies and gentlemen, tempted, like themselves, to make a halt of a few days at this charming spot. Here there was every variety of scenery--lofty mountains, precipitous waterfalls, dense pine forests, and wide undulating stretches of fresh green meadow-land; while in the midst slept the tranquil lake; now kissing with tiny wavelets the pebbles on its silvery shore, now bending away round the bold red cliffs, that guard like weird sentinels this lake Paradise of the North. The face of the huge crags is frayed and worn into deep shadowy caves, whose roofs are tapestried with a profusion of ferns; while by the precipitous margin of the lake, long verdant palm-like fronds wave in the breeze, or stoop to meet sub-aquatic forests of weeds and water-flags. Lœrdalsoren, the highest point which they reached, was a quaint overgrown village, nestling between high green and purple hills. Insignificant as they accounted it, it was a town of no small repute in the surrounding wilderness, for it possessed a doctor, a church, two hotels, and a telegraphic office. Still, in spite of all these advantages, it was an undeniably dismal little place, intensely cold, and with nothing to offer by way of comfort for the inner man, except salmon, a viand of which, when confined to it exclusively, people tire sooner than of any other. Wide ranges of mountains extend all around Lœrdalsoren, towering up one above the other in savage grandeur till their jagged snow-clad peaks seem to pierce the sky. Gray and yellow patches of reindeer's moss carpet the sheltered nooks and hollows among the hills, and the deer themselves are abundant: the skyds-carl pointed out a hill where a native sportsman had recently shot nine in one day. So bitter was the cold, that before they reached Bjoberg, on the downward road, they were half frozen, and could scarcely hold the reins. From Bjoberg the descent was rapid, and was like the change from Christmas to midsummer; the sun's rays became warmer and warmer, and the breeze more mild, until they exchanged the snow-clad hills, the bleak uplands, and the barren patches of reindeer's moss, for the wild-flowers, the sparkling rivers, and the luxuriant greenness of the northern summer. At Huftun they found excellent entertainment at the house of Madame Brun, a Frenchwoman, whose superior cookery worthily sustained the high gastronomical pretensions of her nation. Near her pretty house they shot two varieties of the woodpecker, and saw tranquilly sailing in mid-air, a few hundred yards from them, a splendid specimen of the Norwegian eagle.