She gazed at me, fixedly, free from coyness, with the deliberation of an innocent heart; and, when she saw my attention was as much devoted to her, she smiled; and then, often turning round to look back as she went her way, began to descend the hill towards the town. The shrubs and filbert-trees soon took her from my sight.
CHAPTER XII.
A DRIVE INTO THE INTERIOR—EXTENSIVE AND SUBLIME PROSPECT—NORWEGIAN POST-HOUSES—REPAIR OF THE ROADS—PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE.
On Sunday morning, we went to Krokleven, a spot about twenty miles from Christiania, and celebrated for its scenery. The journey thither was unpleasant enough, for the day was hot, and the roads were dry; and, when the Norwegian started off at the usual speed of his countrymen, the dust, disturbed by the horses' hooves and the carriage wheels, rose in volumes, which overtook and palpably descended upon us, when the driver suddenly halted the career of his steeds at the base of a hill.
The road to Krokleven was as tantalizing as it was perfect in sublimity of scenery; for, from several elevated places, we could observe our path creeping along over the mountains, and down the valleys, to the very cottage where we intended to stop.
But the same solitude prevailed as on the Fiord; and the silence is the more extreme when not even the warbling of a single bird is heard to test a particle of animal existence; and nothing meets the sight but the blue sky, the bald heads of the mountains, and the yellow-tinted foliage of the fir and pine. As the traveller rises from one side of a mountain to a corner of the road, where it hurries perpendicularly down the other side, his eye may fathom a valley several thousand feet beneath, rich in vegetation, and surrounded on all points by rugged mountains covered with illimitable forests of fir, through the branches of which, here and there, the grey rocks glare, like skulls scattered over a green field; and the whole view which is thus taken at one glance may extend before, and on either hand of the spectator, over a space of twenty miles.
The forests are so extensive, and the chance of being lost in them is so probable, that on our arrival in the vicinity of Krokleven, we hired a guide. Wandering along a pleasant by-way, shaded by the overhanging boughs of the birch, the pine, and the fir, we scaled a mountain, and gaining its highest elevation, saw, about two thousand feet below us, an immense lake, chequered with islands, unequal in size, on which were farms, and on the largest small villages. Dividing its waters into two equal parts, the road to Bergen lay no broader than a pen-knife's blade, and twisted, far away, like a white thread round the sides of the mountains.