File:Leer Foss, near Drontheim (JW Edy plate 74).jpg

This small cascade, interesting to the inhabitants of Drontheim as a salmon leap, is situated at an easy distance from that place, in a pleasant part of the country, where parties assemble for the amusement of observing the curious agility of the fish. In the season of their visits, sportsmen are seen on the rocks, armed with spears and nets, to strike and entangle them, by which means many fine salmon are annually taken. These fish have also another enemy to cope with ;if they miss their intended leap, the porpoise, who lies in ambush under the fall, generally catches them. The fall is divided by rocks into three parts, two of which drive several saw-mills. After rams or melting of snow, these three cascades are united into one, and then the rocks are overflowed by the current. The great river above, of which this is only a single branch, takes its rise at a considerable distance up the country, and on it are many beautiful and romantic falls, particularly a larger one near this place, called the greater Leer Foss, which has its saw-mills also. Prodigious quantities of timber are there sawn into deals, the supply being derived from the trees felled in the extensive forests, which are floated down to the lentz above in the usual manner. At this place there are indications that the falls were in early times, of a more considerable extent, and on a level with the highest rocks, which are below that of the main river. Even now, that river supplies a stream which is seen issuing from the woods, and passes in a line with the fall considerably above it, having its cascade also. The basin and bed of the rapids below, appear every where to have been rendered very capacious, by the constant afflux of large bodies of water. The rocks and shores about the falls are of a deep rust colour or dusky red, not unlike old brickwork. I have observed that the same colour prevails in and about the beds of many other falls in Norway. The vegetation in the vicinity, is pleasing, and the trees are tall and straight. The climate about these parts is considered as healthy as that of any part of Norway; indeed the same remark may apply to the whole northern coast. The piercing frosts of winter form a cone of the frozen spray, presenting the appearance of a screen, with large holes; at times, this frozen mass exhibits all the prismatic colours exceedingly vivid, in circles and parts of circles. When the ice breaks in the lakes and rivers above all the falls, the pieces are carried with great velocity over them in an astonishing manner, attended with great noise, and danger to the machinery of the mills and loose timber, which may happen to lie in their course, or may have been lucklessly frozen in, ere it could be got on shore with the boats; unfortunate cases have occurred, in which men, timber, houses, boats, saw-mills, cattle, lentzes and all their contents, have been precipitated in one dreadful mass, over falls, and driven down the rapids for miles between the rocks where no assistance could possibly be afforded; and their mangled remains have been collected in the sea.