No solitary traveller in Norway at the present day need fear robbery or violence. The women soon shouldered my effects, not permitting me to carry anything, and we started through morass, and brake, and rocks, for the shieling of Ketil of the Bog.

At one spot where we rested, the fair Tori chanted me the following strain, which is based on a national legend, the great antiquity of which is testified by the alliterative metre of the original. It refers to a girl who had been carried off by robbers.

Tirreli, Tirreli Tove,

Twelve men met in the grove;
Twelve men mustered they,
Twelve brands bore they.

The goatherd they did bang,
The little dog they did hang,
The stour steer they did slay,
And hung the bell upon a spray,
And now they will murder me,
Far away on the wooded lea.

CHAPTER XII.

Ketil-A few sheep in the wilderness-Brown RyperThe Norwegian peasants bad naturalists-More bridal stones-The effect of glacial action on rocks—“ Catch hold of her tail"-Author makes himself at home in a deserted châlet-A dangerous playfellow-Suledal lake -Character of the inhabitants of Saetersdal-The landlord's daughter-Wooden spoons-Mountain pathsA mournful cavalcade Simple remedies-Landscape painting-The post-road from Gugaard to Bustetun— The clergyman of Roldal parish-Poor little Knut at home-A set of bores-The pencil as a weapon of defence-Still, still they come-A short cut, with the usual result-Author falls into a cavern-The vast white Folgefond-Mountain characteristics — Author arrives at Seligenstad-A milkmaid's lullaby-Sweethearts-The author sees visions - The Hardanger Fjord-Something like scenery.

I was quite at Ketil's mercy in a pecuniary point of view. But he was not one of the Lesere, and was moderate in his demands. After a scramble through his native bog, which would, I think, have

1

on the end of a lake. Here we took boat, and there being a spanking breeze, we soon shot over the six miles of water. With a stern-wind, fishing was not to be thought of; I never found it answer. At the other end of the lake was a stone cabin, where I took shelter from the blast, while Ketil went in search of his horse.

While I was engaged caulking the seams in my appetite, a fine young fellow in sailor's costume, who had rowed from the opposite shore, looked in. Talleif, as he was yclept, was from Tjelmodal, with a flock of fourteen thousand sheep and twenty milking goats. He and his comrade, Lars, sleep in an old bear-hole in the Urden (loose rocks). They get nine skillings (threepence) a-head for tending the sheep for ten weeks. Besides this, they pay twelve dollars to Ketil and two other peasants, who are the possessors of these wilds. Their chief food is the milk of the goats. In winter they get their living by fishing.

66

Have you any ryper here," said I to Ketil, as

66

Are there no brown ones?"

"No; they are grey, and in winter snowwhite."

At this instant I heard the well-known cackle of the cock of the brown species, and a large covey of these birds rose out of the covert.

"Well, they are brown," said he; "now, I never laid mark to (remarked) that before."

So much for the observation of these people. Never rely upon them for any information respecting birds, beasts, fishes, or plants. All colours are the same to a blind man, and they are such. I take the man's word, however, for the fact of there being abundance of otters about and reindeer higher up.

Terribly desolate was that Norwegian Fjeld that now lay before us. But setting our faces resolutely to the ascent, we topped it in two and a half hours, the way now and then threading mossy lanes, so to say, sunk between sloping planes of

rock. Screeching out in the unharmonious jargon of Vatnedal, which the Saetersdal people, proud of their own musical lungs, call "an alarm,” Ketil pointed to a row of stones upon the ridge similar to those I had seen the day before, also called the Bridal stones, and with a similar legend attached to them. What poverty of invention. Why not call them Funeral stones by way of ringing the changes? But no; the people of this country will escort a bride much further than a bier. The honours of sepulture are done with a niggard grace.

As we now began to descend past beds of unmelted snow, I had a good opportunity of seeing the manifest effect of glacial action upon the rocks, the strata of which had been heaved up perpendicularly. Rounded by the ice in one direction, and quartered by their own cleavage in another, the rocks looked for all the world like a vast dish of sweetbreads; just the sort of tid-bit for that colossal Jotul yonder behind us, with the portentously groggy nose, who stands out in sharp relief against the sky. What Gorgon's head did