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1The mountain, which thus receives at its feet the assaults of the sea, and on its head the buffeting of the north wind, is the Falberg. Its summit, always wrapped in a mantle of ice and snow, is the highest in Norway, where the vicinity of the Pole produces, at a level of eighteen hundred feet above the sea, such cold as prevails elsewhere on the highest mountains on the globe. The crest of this cliff, perpendicular.on the side toward the sea, shelves gradually away to the east down to the falls of the Sieg, by a succession of slopes where the cold allows no vegetation but heath and much-enduring shrubs. That SERAPHITA 11 part of the fiord where the waters escape under the thick forests is called Siegdalen, or the valley of the Sieg—the name of the river.
2The bay opposite to the cliffs of the Falberg is the valley of Jarvis—a pretty spot overlooked by hills covered with fir-trees, larches, and birch, with a few oaks and beeches, the thickest and most variously colored hangings Nature ever affords to this wild northern scenery. The eye can easily distinguish the line where the ground, warmed by the sun’s rays, first admits of culture and shows the first signs of the Norwegian flora. At this part the gulf is wide enough to allow the waters flung back by the Falberg to die murmuring on the lowest ledge of the hills, where the strand is softly fringed with fine sand, mingled with mica, tiny crystals, and pretty pebbles of porphyry and many-colored marbles brought from Sweden by the river, with waifs from the sea, and shells and ocean weeds tossed up by storms from the Pole or from the South.
3At the foot of the Jarvis hills is the village, consisting of about two hundred wooden houses, inhabited by a population that live there, lost, like the swarms of bees in a forest, happily vegetating and extorting a living from the wilderness around them. The unrecognized existence of this village is easily explained. Few of its men were bold enough to venture out among the rocks to reach the open sea and attempt the fishing which the Norwegians carry on to a great extent on less dangerous parts of the coast. The various fish in the fiord partly supplies the food of the inhabitants; the pasture land in the valleys affords milk and butter; a few plots of good land allow them to reap a harvest of rye, of hemp, and vegetables, which they manage to protect against the bitter cold and the transient but terrible 12 BALZAC’S WORKS — heat of the sun, showing true Norwegian ingenuity in this twofold conflict. The absence of communications, either by land, where roads are impracticable, or by sea, where only small boats can thread the watery labyrinths of the fiord, hinders them from acquiring wealth by the sale of their timber. It would cost an equally enormous sum to clear the channel at the entrance or to open up a road to the interior.
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.
1The mountain, which thus receives at its feet the assaults of the sea, and on its head the buffeting of the north wind, is the Falberg. Its summit, always wrapped in a mantle of ice and snow, is the highest in Norway, where the vicinity of the Pole produces, at a level of eighteen hundred feet above the sea, such cold as prevails elsewhere on the highest mountains on the globe. The crest of this cliff, perpendicular.on the side toward the sea, shelves gradually away to the east down to the falls of the Sieg, by a succession of slopes where the cold allows no vegetation but heath and much-enduring shrubs. That SERAPHITA 11 part of the fiord where the waters escape under the thick forests is called Siegdalen, or the valley of the Sieg—the name of the river.
2The bay opposite to the cliffs of the Falberg is the valley of Jarvis—a pretty spot overlooked by hills covered with fir-trees, larches, and birch, with a few oaks and beeches, the thickest and most variously colored hangings Nature ever affords to this wild northern scenery. The eye can easily distinguish the line where the ground, warmed by the sun’s rays, first admits of culture and shows the first signs of the Norwegian flora. At this part the gulf is wide enough to allow the waters flung back by the Falberg to die murmuring on the lowest ledge of the hills, where the strand is softly fringed with fine sand, mingled with mica, tiny crystals, and pretty pebbles of porphyry and many-colored marbles brought from Sweden by the river, with waifs from the sea, and shells and ocean weeds tossed up by storms from the Pole or from the South.
3At the foot of the Jarvis hills is the village, consisting of about two hundred wooden houses, inhabited by a population that live there, lost, like the swarms of bees in a forest, happily vegetating and extorting a living from the wilderness around them. The unrecognized existence of this village is easily explained. Few of its men were bold enough to venture out among the rocks to reach the open sea and attempt the fishing which the Norwegians carry on to a great extent on less dangerous parts of the coast. The various fish in the fiord partly supplies the food of the inhabitants; the pasture land in the valleys affords milk and butter; a few plots of good land allow them to reap a harvest of rye, of hemp, and vegetables, which they manage to protect against the bitter cold and the transient but terrible 12 BALZAC’S WORKS — heat of the sun, showing true Norwegian ingenuity in this twofold conflict. The absence of communications, either by land, where roads are impracticable, or by sea, where only small boats can thread the watery labyrinths of the fiord, hinders them from acquiring wealth by the sale of their timber. It would cost an equally enormous sum to clear the channel at the entrance or to open up a road to the interior.
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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