bordered with finest sand, strewn with mica and sparkling pebbles,
porphyry, and marbles of a thousand tints, brought from Sweden by the
river floods, together with ocean waifs, shells, and flowers of the
sea driven in by tempests, whether of the Pole or Tropics.

At the foot of the hills of Jarvis lies a village of some two hundred
wooden houses, where an isolated population lives like a swarm of bees
in a forest, without increasing or diminishing; vegetating happily,
while wringing their means of living from the breast of a stern
Nature. The almost unknown existence of the little hamlet is readily
accounted for. Few of its inhabitants were bold enough to risk their
lives among the reefs to reach the deep-sea fishing,--the staple
industry of Norwegians on the least dangerous portions of their coast.
The fish of the fiord were numerous enough to suffice, in part at
least, for the sustenance of the inhabitants; the valley pastures
provided milk and butter; a certain amount of fruitful, well-tilled
soil yielded rye and hemp and vegetables, which necessity taught the
people to protect against the severity of the cold and the fleeting
but terrible heat of the sun with the shrewd ability which Norwegians
display in the two-fold struggle. The difficulty of communication with
the outer world, either by land where the roads are impassable, or by
sea where none but tiny boats can thread their way through the
maritime defiles that guard the entrance to the bay, hinder these
people from growing rich by the sale of their timber. It would cost
enormous sums to either blast a channel out to sea or construct a way
to the interior. The roads from Christiana to Trondhjem all turn
toward the Strom-fiord, and cross the Sieg by a bridge some score of
miles above its fall into the bay. The country to the north, between
Jarvis and Trondhjem, is covered with impenetrable forests, while to
the south the Falberg is nearly as much separated from Christiana by