We
turned and turned, and entering the fourth curve of the vale, we found
all at once that we had been ascending. The verdure vanished! All the
beech trees were leafless, and so were the silver birches, whose boughs
always, winter and summer, hang so elegantly. But low down in the
valley, and in little companies on each bank of the river, a multitude
of green conical fir trees, with herds of cattle wandering about, almost
every one with a cylindrical bell around its neck, of no inconsiderable
size, and as they moved--scattered over the narrow vale, and up among
the trees on the hill--the noise was like that of a great city in the
stillness of a sabbath morning, when the bells all at once are ringing
for church. The whole was a melancholy and romantic scene, that was
quite new to me. Again we turned, passed three smelting houses, which we
visited; a scene of terrible beauty is a furnace of boiling metal,
darting, every moment blue, green, and scarlet lightning, like serpents'
tongues!--and now we ascended a steep hill, on the top of which was St.
Andrias Berg, a town built wholly of wood.
We descended again, to ascend far higher; and now we came to a most
beautiful road, which winded on the breast of the hill, from whence we
looked down into a deep valley, or huge basin, full of pines and firs;
the opposite hills full of pines and frs; and the hill above us, on
whose breast we were winding, likewise full of pines and firs.
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