The Simodal is a beautiful and fertile valley, with farms on either bank of the river, which rushes through it to the fjord. This river comes from the glacier, but not directly. The head of the valley is choked by a high cliff, over which tumbles a grand waterfall, and this issues from a large mountain lake, into the opposite end of which descends the snout of the glacier, with a continuous stream of milky water flowing from it. So far there is nothing peculiar in all this, but the peculiarity lies higher up. Some little distance up the glacier, and almost at right angles to one side of it, is a rocky hollow or small valley, and into this the water begins to pour in the spring as soon as the sun is strong enough to begin to melt the snow. The great glacier blocks up the end of this hollow with a thick dam of ice, and before long a huge lake is formed. What used to happen every two or three years was that the pressure of the water in this dammed-up lake became so tremendous that the glacier at last could resist it no longer. Away went the side and lower part of the glacier, and with one mighty crash the water escaped. Down into the lower lake, and over the waterfall, the wall of solid water, several feet in height, descended into the valley. There it carried destruction far and wide, sweeping away crops, cattle, farm buildings, bridges, and everything that came in its way. The loss of life also was often considerable, for there was no warning other than the roar of the water as it burst into the valley. A few years ago, however, some Norwegian engineers devised a means of averting these terrible floods by enabling the upper lake to empty itself gradually. They constructed under the glacier an iron-lined tunnel, connecting the upper lake with the lower, and in this way the water escaped at once. So the people of Simodal can now sleep in peace. CHAPTER XIII DRIVING IN NORWAY Like Switzerland, Norway has splendid roads. No difficulty in road-making seems to be too great for the Norwegian engineers to overcome. One frequently sees miles of road cut out of the solid rock of some mountain-side, and skirting the edge of a fjord or long lake. Again, a road may wind its way through a narrow gorge, with precipices a thousand feet high on either hand, and down in the depths a wild torrent, crossed every here and there by massive stone bridges; or, over the open mountains a road will zigzag upwards to a pass in long loops, like the famous "Snake Road" near Roeldal. And the surface of all these roads is hard and kept in good repair--at any rate, in the summer months. In the winter they are, of course, thick in snow, which, when beaten down by the sleigh traffic, forms a new surface, which takes the wear and tear off the actual roadway for several months.