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220 THROUGH NORWAY WITII A KNAPSACK.
ascents. I saw little more than peaks of rock and plains
of snow, and a portion of the "fond," or mother-land
of glaciers; the vast table-land of snow and ice, from
which the numerous glaciers of this region descend,
being visible from this point. I descended again and
made for the pass that seemed the most likely to be the
correct one, and in ascending towards it found upon the
snow the footmarks of a horse and two men; these
being evidently recent, I determined to follow them, as
the Justedal is almost the only destination for anybody.
I could not have believed it possible for a horse to travel
over such ground had I not seen the footprints, and I
suspect that none but a Norwegian horse could do
it. It is a steep mountain side, covered with angular
boulders varying in size from a man’s head to a church,
heaped together to an unknown depth, with crooked
crevasses between, some filled with snow and others
gaping open. Part of the climbing is to be done by
stepping on the angles of the smaller blocks, or along
the edges of the larger where they are wedged in with
an edge upwards, and partly over the sloping
snow-covered surfaces of the largest masses. Snow climbing
o ö
is always very laborious, but this sort of compound of
snow, and rock, and treacherous snow-covered holes, is
particularly so.
On reaching the summit a singular scene presented
itself. At the foot of a vast amphitheatre of snowy
mountain peaks is a gloomy basin of rock filled with
the waters of a half-frozen lake. The water comes
directly from the snow above, and is of a peculiar blue-
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