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
inaccessible precipices. The village of Jarvis might perhaps have
communicated with the interior of Norway and Sweden by the river Sieg;
but to do this and to be thus brought into contact with civilization,
the Strom-fiord needed the presence of a man of genius. Such a man did
actually appear there,--a poet, a Swede of great religious fervor, who
died admiring, even reverencing this region as one of the noblest
works of the Creator.
Minds endowed by study with an inward sight, and whose quick
perceptions bring before the soul, as though painted on a canvas, the
contrasting scenery of this universe, will now apprehend the general
features of the Strom-fiord. They alone, perhaps, can thread their way
through the tortuous channels of the reef, or flee with the battling
waves to the everlasting rebuff of the Falberg whose white peaks
mingle with the vaporous clouds of the pearl-gray sky, or watch with
delight the curving sheet of waters, or hear the rushing of the Sieg
as it hangs for an instant in long fillets and then falls over a
picturesque abatis of noble trees toppled confusedly together,
sometimes upright, sometimes half-sunken beneath the rocks.
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