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1which most geographers have tried to adopt into their respective languages. In spite of the general resemblance of all these channels, each has its own individuality; the sea penetrates into all these breaches, but in each the rocks are differently riven, and their contorted precipices defy the terms of geometry: here the crest is toothed like a saw; there its sides are too perpendicular to allow the snow to rest on them, or the glorious clumps of northern pines to take root; further on, the convulsions of the globe have rounded off some soft declivity, a lovely valley furnished with stage on stage of dark-plumed trees. You feel inclined to call this land Marine Switzerland. One of these gulfs, lying between Dronthjem and Christiania, is called Stromfiord. If the Stromfiord is not the most beautiful of these scenes, it has at least the merit of presenting the earthly magnificence of Norway, and of having been the background to the scenes of a really heavenly romance.
2The general outline of the Stromfiord is, at a first glance, that of a funnel forced open by the sea. The entrance made by the waves is the record of a contest between the ocean and the granite, two equally powerful elements—one by its inertia, the other by its motion. The proof lies in some half-sunken rocks of fantastic shapes which prohibit the entrance of vessels. The hardy sons of the soil can in some places leap from rock to rock, undismayed by a gulf a hundred fathoms deep and six feet wide. Here and there a frail and ill-balanced block of gneiss, thrown across, joins two crags, or hunters or fishermen have flung some pine trees, by way of a bridge, from one perpendicular cliff to another, where the sea murmurs unceasingly below. 10 BALZAC’S WORKS This dangerous inlet turns to the right with a serpentine twist, where it meets a mountain rising three hundred fathoms above the surface of the sea, its foot forming a vertical
3shelf half a league in length, where the unyielding granite does not begin to split into rifts and inequalities till at about two hundred feet above the water. Thus the sea, © rushing violently in, is no less violently driven back, by the resistant inertia of the mountain, toward the opposite shore, which the rebounding waves have worn into gentle indentations. The fiord is closed at the head by a cliff of gneiss, crowned with forest, whence a stream falls in cascades, forms a river when the snows melt, spreads into a lake of considerable extent, and escapes with a rush, carrying down old pine trees and ancient larches, hardly perceptible in the tumbling torrent. Flung by the fall to the bottom of the abyss, these trees presently come to the surface again, and combine in a tangle, forming islets which are stranded on the left bank, where the inhabitants of the little village built on the Stromfiord find them splintered, broken, sometimes entire, but always stripped of their leaves and branches.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1which most geographers have tried to adopt into their respective languages. In spite of the general resemblance of all these channels, each has its own individuality; the sea penetrates into all these breaches, but in each the rocks are differently riven, and their contorted precipices defy the terms of geometry: here the crest is toothed like a saw; there its sides are too perpendicular to allow the snow to rest on them, or the glorious clumps of northern pines to take root; further on, the convulsions of the globe have rounded off some soft declivity, a lovely valley furnished with stage on stage of dark-plumed trees. You feel inclined to call this land Marine Switzerland. One of these gulfs, lying between Dronthjem and Christiania, is called Stromfiord. If the Stromfiord is not the most beautiful of these scenes, it has at least the merit of presenting the earthly magnificence of Norway, and of having been the background to the scenes of a really heavenly romance.
2The general outline of the Stromfiord is, at a first glance, that of a funnel forced open by the sea. The entrance made by the waves is the record of a contest between the ocean and the granite, two equally powerful elements—one by its inertia, the other by its motion. The proof lies in some half-sunken rocks of fantastic shapes which prohibit the entrance of vessels. The hardy sons of the soil can in some places leap from rock to rock, undismayed by a gulf a hundred fathoms deep and six feet wide. Here and there a frail and ill-balanced block of gneiss, thrown across, joins two crags, or hunters or fishermen have flung some pine trees, by way of a bridge, from one perpendicular cliff to another, where the sea murmurs unceasingly below. 10 BALZAC’S WORKS This dangerous inlet turns to the right with a serpentine twist, where it meets a mountain rising three hundred fathoms above the surface of the sea, its foot forming a vertical
3shelf half a league in length, where the unyielding granite does not begin to split into rifts and inequalities till at about two hundred feet above the water. Thus the sea, © rushing violently in, is no less violently driven back, by the resistant inertia of the mountain, toward the opposite shore, which the rebounding waves have worn into gentle indentations. The fiord is closed at the head by a cliff of gneiss, crowned with forest, whence a stream falls in cascades, forms a river when the snows melt, spreads into a lake of considerable extent, and escapes with a rush, carrying down old pine trees and ancient larches, hardly perceptible in the tumbling torrent. Flung by the fall to the bottom of the abyss, these trees presently come to the surface again, and combine in a tangle, forming islets which are stranded on the left bank, where the inhabitants of the little village built on the Stromfiord find them splintered, broken, sometimes entire, but always stripped of their leaves and branches.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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