This one can see at a glance, since the trees are both higher and of finer quality.  There you’ll find maple and oak and linden and weeping-birch and hazel trees growing, but no cone-trees to speak of.  And it is still more noticeable because of the amount of cultivated land that you will find there; and also because the people have built themselves great and beautiful houses.  On the middle step, there are many churches, with large towns around them; and in every way it makes a better and finer appearance than the top step.

“But the very lowest step is the best of all.  It is covered with good rich soil; and, where it lies and bathes in the sea, it hasn’t the slightest feeling of the Smaland chill.  Beeches and chestnut and walnut trees thrive down here; and they grow so big that they tower above the church-roofs.  Here lie also the largest grain-fields; but the people have not only timber and farming to live upon, but they are also occupied with fishing and trading and seafaring.  For this reason you will find the most costly residences and the prettiest churches here; and the parishes have developed into villages and cities.

“But this is not all that is said of the three steps.  For one must realise that when it rains on the roof of the big Smaland house, or when the snow melts up there, the water has to go somewhere; and then, naturally, a lot of it is spilled over the big stairway.  In the beginning it probably oozed over the whole stairway, big as it was; then cracks appeared in it, and, gradually, the water has accustomed itself to flow alongside of it, in well dug-out grooves.  And water is water, whatever one does with it.  It never has any rest.  In one place it cuts and files away, and in another it adds to.  Those grooves it has dug into vales, and the walls of the vales it has decked with soil; and bushes and trees and vines have clung to them ever since—­so thick, and in such profusion, that they almost hide the stream of water that winds its way down there in the deep.  But when the streams come to the landings between the steps, they throw themselves headlong over them; this is why the water comes with such a seething rush, that it gathers strength with which to move mill-wheels and machinery—­these, too, have sprung up by every waterfall.

“But this does not tell all that is said of the land with the three steps.  It must also be told that up in the big house in Smaland there lived once upon a time a giant, who had grown very old.  And it fatigued him in his extreme age, to be forced to walk down that long stairway in order to catch salmon from the sea.  To him it seemed much more suitable that the salmon should come up to him, where he lived.

“Therefore, he went up on the roof of his great house; and there he stood and threw stones down into the East sea.  He threw them with such force that they flew over the whole of Blekinge and dropped into the sea.  And when the stones came down, the salmon got so scared that they came up from the sea and fled toward the Blekinge streams; ran through the rapids; flung themselves with high leaps over the waterfalls, and stopped.