fences, even those of fields. This Swedish house, thus protected
against the climate, stood on rising ground in the centre of an

immensecourtyard. The windows were sheltered by those projecting
pent-house roofs supported by squared trunks of trees which give so

patriarchal an air to Northern dwellings. From beneath them the eye
could see the savage nudity of the Falberg, or compare the infinitude

of the open sea with the tiny drop of water in the foaming fiord; the
ear could hear the flowing of the Sieg, whose white sheet far away

looked motionless as it fell into its granite cup edged for miles
around with glaciers,--in short, from this vantage ground the whole

landscapewhereon our simple yet superhuman drama was about to be
enacted could be seen and noted.

The winter of 1799-1800 was one of the most severe ever known to
Europeans. The Norwegian sea was frozen in all the fiords, where, as a

usual thing, the violence of the surf kept the ice from forming. A
wind, whose effects were like those of the Spanish levanter, swept the

ice of the Strom-fiord, driving the snow to the upper end of the gulf.
Seldom indeed could the people of Jarvis see the mirror of frozen

waters reflecting the colors of the sky; a wondrous site in the bosom
of these mountains when all other aspects of nature are levelled

beneath successive sheets of snow, and crests and valleys are alike
mere folds of the vast mantle flung by winter across a landscape at

once so mournfully dazzling and so monotonous. The falling volume of
the Sieg, suddenly frozen, formed an immense arcade beneath which the

inhabitants might have crossed under shelter from the blast had any
dared to risk themselves inland. But the dangers of every step away

from their own surroundings kept even the boldest hunters in their
homes, afraid lest the narrow paths along the precipices, the clefts

and fissures among the rocks, might be unrecognizable beneath the
snow.

Thus it was that no human creature gave life to the white desert where
Boreas reigned, his voice alone resounding at distant intervals. The

sky, nearly always gray, gave tones of polished steel to the ice of
the fiord. Perchance some ancient eider-duck crossed the expanse,

trusting to the warm down beneath which dream, in other lands, the
luxurious rich, little knowing of the dangers through which their

luxury has come to them. Like the Bedouin of the desert who darts
alone across the sands of Africa, the bird is neither seen nor heard;

the torpid atmosphere, deprived of its electrical conditions, echoes
neither the whirr of its wings nor its joyous notes. Besides, what

human eye was strong enough to bear the glitter of those pinnacles
adorned with sparkling crystals, or the sharp reflections of the snow,

iridescent on the summits in the rays of a pallid sun which
infrequently appeared, like a dying man seeking to make known that he

still lives. Often, when the flocks of gray clouds, driven in
squadrons athwart the mountains and among the tree-tops, hid the sky

with their triple veils Earth, lacking the celestial lights, lit
herself by herself.

Here, then, we meet the majesty of Cold, seated eternally at the pole
in that regal silence which is the attribute of all absolute monarchy.

Every extreme principle carries with it an appearance of negation and
the symptoms of death; for is not life the struggle of two forces?

Here in this Northern nature nothing lived. One sole power--the
unproductive power of ice--reigned unchallenged. The roar of the open

sea no longer reached the deaf, dumb inlet, where during one short
season of the year Nature made haste to produce the slender harvests

necessary for the food of the patient people. A few tall pine-trees
lifted their black pyramids garlanded with snow, and the form of their

long branches and depending shoots completed the mourning garments of
those solemn heights.

Each household gathered in its chimney-corner, in houses carefully
closed from the outer air, and well supplied with biscuit, melted

butter, dried fish, and other provisions laid in for the seven-months
winter. The very smoke of these dwellings was hardly seen, half-hidden

as they were beneath the snow, against the weight of which they were
protected by long planks reaching from the roof and fastened at some

distance to solid blocks on the ground, forming a covered way around
each building.

During these terrible winter months the women spun and dyed the
woollen stuffs and the linen fabrics with which they clothed their

families, while the men read, or fell into those endless meditations
which have given birth to so many profound theories, to the mystic

dreams of the North, to its beliefs, to its studies (so full and so
complete in one science, at least, sounded as with a plummet), to its

manners and its morals, half-monastic, which force the soul to react
and feed upon itself and make the Norwegian peasant a being apart

among the peoples of Europe.
Such was the condition of the Strom-fiord in the first year of the

nineteenth century and about the middle of the month of May.
On a morning when the sun burst forth upon this landscape, lighting

the fires of the ephemeral diamonds produced by crystallizations of
the snow and ice, two beings crossed the fiord and flew along the base

of the Falberg, rising thence from ledge to ledge toward the summit.
What were they? human creatures, or two arrows? They might have been

taken for eider-ducks sailing in consort before the wind. Not the
boldest hunter nor the most superstitiousfisherman would have

attributed to human beings the power to move safely along the slender
lines traced beneath the snow by the granite ledges, where yet this

couple glided with the terrifying dexterity of somnambulists who,
forgetting their own weight and the dangers of the slightest

deviation, hurry along a ridge-pole and keep their equilibrium by the
power of some mysterious force.

"Stop me, Seraphitus," said a pale young girl, "and let me breathe. I
look at you, you only, while scaling these walls of the gulf;

otherwise, what would become of me? I am such a feeble creature. Do I
tire you?"

"No," said the being on whose arm she leaned. "But let us go on,
Minna; the place where we are is not firm enough to stand on."

Once more the snow creaked sharply beneath the long boards fastened to
their feet, and soon they reached the upper terrace of the first

ledge, clearly defined upon the flank of the precipice. The person
whom Minna had addressed as Seraphitus threw his weight upon his right

heel, arresting the plank--six and a half feet long and narrow as the
foot of a child--which was fastened to his boot by a double thong of

leather. This plank, two inches thick, was covered with reindeer skin,
which bristled against the snow when the foot was raised, and served

to stop the wearer. Seraphitus drew in his left foot, furnished with
another "skee," which was only two feet long, turned swiftly where he

stood, caught his timid companion in his arms, lifted her in spite of
the long boards on her feet, and placed her on a projecting rock from

which he brushed the snow with his pelisse.
"You are safe there, Minna; you can tremble at your ease."

"We are a third of the way up the Ice-Cap," she said, looking at the
peak to which she gave the popular name by which it is known in

Norway; "I can hardly believe it."
Too much out of breath to say more, she smiled at Seraphitus, who,

without answering, laid his hand upon her heart and listened to its
sounding throbs, rapid as those of a frightened bird.

"It often beats as fast when I run," she said.
Seraphitus inclined his head with a gesture that was neither coldness

nor indifference, and yet, despite the grace which made the movement
almost tender, it none the less bespoke a certain negation, which in a

woman would have seemed an exquisite coquetry. Seraphitus clasped the
young girl in his arms. Minna accepted the caress as an answer to her

words, continuing to gaze at him. As he raised his head, and threw
back with impatientgesture the golden masses of his hair to free his

brow, he saw an expression of joy in the eyes of his companion.
"Yes, Minna," he said in a voice whose paternal accents were charming

from the lips of a being who was still adolescent, "Keep your eyes on
me; do not look below you."

"Why not?" she asked.
"You wish to know why? then look!"

Minna glanced quickly at her feet and cried out suddenly like a child
who sees a tiger. The awful sensation of abysses seized her; one

glance sufficed to communicate its contagion. The fiord, eager for
food, bewildered her with its loud voice ringing in her ears,

interposing between herself and life as though to devour her more
surely. From the crown of her head to her feet and along her spine an