But the summer rainfall on the high fjelds is always heavy, and even after all the snow of the year has melted, an immense amount of water has to drain away to the lowlands, and so to the sea. At first it collects in the tarns which fill the hollows of the mountain plateaux, but these, overflowing, soon send their surplus water by certain channels away over the cliffs. The greater waterfalls, however, are those which indirectly carry off the water from the snowfields, the mountains capped with perpetual snow; for, except during the frost-bound months of winter, these falls are always full. The snowfields are of themselves of immense interest, but so intimately are they connected with the glaciers that we shall speak of the two together. A snowfield may exist without a glacier, but a glacier cannot exist without a snowfield--that is to say, the glacier is made by the snowfield. How snowfields came into existence nobody knows for certain, but it is generally supposed by learned people who have studied the matter that, thousands of years ago, after what is called the Great Ice Age, Norway gradually put off her mantle of ice and snow and became what she is now; but the snow on the higher parts of the land has never yet had time to melt right away, because fresh snow is always falling and adding to the pile. And it is the weight of all this fresh snow on the top of the accumulation of centuries which produces the glaciers. The Folgefond, in the Hardanger district, is the snowfield which most people who visit Norway see sooner or later, and since it covers an area of 120 square miles, at a height of about 5,500 feet above the sea, it is visible from a great many points of view. It forms a background to many a picture of the varied scenery of the Hardanger Fjord, and it has the advantage of being easily accessible. Of course, the belief in the old popular legends is dying out even in Norway, but there are still some aged grandfathers and grandmothers living near the great snowfield who can tell the tales as they were told to them. Thus they relate that where the Folgefond now lies was once a fertile and well-peopled valley, called Folgedalen, and that in one night its farms, forests, people, and cattle were buried in snow as a judgment for some great sin. One story ascribes the misfortune to the curse of a gipsy woman, who had been refused alms by the priest; while another relates that the valley was overwhelmed because the inhabitants had murdered their liege lord, the petty King of the district. But why it happened and how it happened does not really much matter, for there the vast field of snow is to-day, and there it will doubtless remain for many centuries to come. As has been said, you can go up to the top of it and sleigh across a portion of its summit, or you can potter round about it and examine its many glaciers.