That branch of the Dal-elv which goes round the garden is strewn with small islands, where beautiful hanging birches and fir-trees grow in Scandinavian splendour.  There are small islands with green, silent groves; there are small islands with rich grass, tall brackens, variegated bell-flowers, and cowslips—­no Turkey carpet has fresher colours.  The stream between these islands and holms is sometimes rapid, deep, and clear; sometimes like a broad rivulet with silky-green rushes, water-lilies, and brown-feathered reeds; sometimes it is a brook with a stony ground, and now it spreads itself out in a large, still mill-dam.

Here is a landscape in Midsummer for the games of the river-sprites, and the dancers of the elves and fairies!  Here, in the lustre of the full moon, the dryads can tell their tales, the water-sprite seize the golden harp, and believe that one can be blessed, at least for one single night like this.

On the other side of Oens Brueck is the main stream—­the full Dal-elv.  Do you hear the monotonous rumble? it is not from Elvkarleby Fall that it reaches hither; it is close by; it is from Laa-Foss, in which lies Ash Island:  the elv streams and rushes over the leaping salmon.

Let us sit here, between the fragments of rock by the shore, in the red evening sunlight, which sheds a golden lustre on the waters of the Dal-elv.

Glorious river!  But a few seconds’ work hast thou to do in the mills yonder, and thou rushest foaming on over Elvkarleby’s rocks, down into the deep bed of the river, which leads thee to the Baltic—­thy eternity.

DANEMORA.

* * * * *

Reader, do you know what giddiness is?  Pray that she may not seize you, this mighty “Loreley” of the heights, this evil-genius from the land of the sylphides; she whizzes around her prey, and whirls it into the abyss.  She sits on the narrow rocky path, close by the steep declivity, where no tree, no branch is found, where the wanderer must creep close to the side of the rock, and look steadily forward.  She sits on the church spire and nods to the plumber who works on his swaying scaffold; she glides into the illumined saloon, and up to the nervous, solitary one, in the middle of the bright polished floor, and it sways under him—­the walls vanish from him.

Her fingers touch one of the hairs of our head, and we feel as if the air had left us, and we were in a vacuum.

We met with her at Danemora’s immense gulf, whither we came on broad, smooth, excellent high-roads, through the fresh forest.  She sat on the extreme edge of the rocky wall, above the abyss, and kicked at the tun with her thin, awl-like legs, as it hung in iron chains on large beams, from the tower-high corner of the bridge by the precipice.