"O, yes!"
It took me three days to recover that valise; and the important lesson of "O, yes," was effectually learned.
Early next morning we took leave of Veblungsnäs, and drove directly towards the Romsdal, one of the finest valleys in all Norway. Before us, like a mighty sentinel, the imposing Romsdalhorn rose, dark with somber shadows, to an altitude of five thousand and ninety feet. The peak itself, five hundred feet in height, is said to be almost as dangerous to ascend as the appalling Matterhorn, not only on account of its perpendicular sides, but also from the crumbling nature of the rock, which renders it impossible to fasten iron bars in its surface.
Some years ago, an English tourist, after a number of unsuccessful efforts, finally reached the summit of this mountain. He was, of course, exultant. The inhabitants of the valley had told him that the conquest of the Romsdalhorn was hopeless, and no tradition existed among them that its ascent had ever been made. Nevertheless, when the successful climber finally stood upon the mountain's crest, he found to his astonishment and regret that he was not the first man who had gained this victory. A mound of stones, heaped up there as a monument, proved beyond doubt that at some unknown epoch some one had been there before him.
THE ROMSDALHORN.
Driving around the base of this majestic mountain, we found ourselves within a narrow gorge shut in by savage cliffs, with barely space enough between them for the carriage-road and a wild torrent rushing toward the sea. One wall of this ravine is singularly weird and awe-inspiring. A multitude of crags and pinnacles, splintered and shattered by the lightning's bolts, stand out in sharp relief against the sky, as if some monsters, hidden on the other side, were raising o'er the brink of these stupendous precipices their outstretched hands and tapering fingers in warning or in supplication. These strange, fantastic forms are in the evening light so ghostly and uncanny, that they appear to the Norwegian peasants like demons dancing gleefully upon the mountain tops. Hence the pinnacles are called the "Witches' Peaks."
