It may be
that such minds alone can dwell upon the smiling scenes nestling among
the lower hills of Jarvis; where the luscious Northern vegetables
spring up in families, in myriads, where the white birches bend,
graceful as maidens, where colonnades of beeches rear their boles
mossy with the growth of centuries, where shades of green contrast,
and white clouds float amid the blackness of the distant pines, and
tracts of many-tinted crimson and purple shrubs are shaded endlessly;
in short, where blend all colors, all perfumes of a flora whose
wonders are still ignored. Widen the boundaries of this limited
ampitheatre, spring upward to the clouds, lose yourself among the
rocks where the seals are lying and even then your thought cannot
compass the wealth of beauty nor the poetry of this Norwegian coast.
Can your thought be as vast as the ocean that bounds it? as weird as
the fantastic forms drawn by these forests, these clouds, these
shadows, these changeful lights?
Do you see above the meadows on that lowest slope which undulates
around the higher hills of Jarvis two or three hundred houses roofed
with "noever," a sort of thatch made of birch-bark,--frail houses,
long and low, looking like silk-worms on a mulberry-leaf tossed hither
by the winds? Above these humble, peaceful dwellings stands the
church, built with a simplicity in keeping with the poverty of the
villagers.
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