CHAPTER VI.

A dreary station-Strange bed-fellows Broadsides— Comfortable proverb-Skarp England-Interesting particulars-A hospitable Norwegian Foged-Foster-children-The great bear-hunter-A terrible Bruin-Forty winks-The great Vennefoss-A temperance lamentation-More bear talk-Grey legs-Monosyllabic conversation-Trout fished from the briny deep-A warning to the beaux of St. James's-street-Thieves' cave-A novelette for the Adelphi.

I STOP for the night at the dreary station of Homsmoen. By a singular economy in household furniture, the cornice of the uncurtained state-bed is made to serve as a shelf, and all the crockery, together with the other household gods or goods of the establishment, are perched thereon, threatening to fall upon me if I made the slightest movement, so that my feelings, and those of Damocles, must have been not unlike; and when I did get to sleep, my slumbers were suddenly disturbed by the creeping of a mouse or

rat, not "behind the arras," for the wooden walls were bare, but under my pillow. Gracious goodness! is it my destiny then to fall a prey to these wretches? Notwithstanding, I soon dozed off to sleep again, muttering to myself something about "Coctilibus muris," and "dead for a ducat."

In the morning, when the peasant-wife brings me coffee, I tell her of the muscipular disturbances of the past night. She replies, with much sang froid, “O ja, de pleie at holde sig da" (Oh yes, they are in the habit of being there), i. e., in the loose bed-straw.

While sipping my coffee, I read a printed address hung upon the wall, wherein "a simple Norwegian, of humble estate," urges his countrymen not to drink brandy. A second notice is an explanation of infant baptism. This is evidently to counteract the doctrines of the clergyman Lammers, who, as I have mentioned elsewhere, has founded an antipedobaptist sect. Indeed, I see in the papers advertisements of half-a-dozen works that have lately appeared on the subject. Another specimen of this wall-literature was a

collection of Norwegian proverbs, one of which might perhaps serve to reconcile an explorer in this country to indifferent accommodation. "The poor man's house is his palace." Another proverb rebuked pride, in the following manner:-" Dust is still dust, although it rise to heaven."

Next day we pass a solitary farmstead, which my attendant informs me is called Skarp England (i.e., scanty, not deep-soiled, meadow-land). Were it not for those Angles, the generally reputed godfathers of England, one would almost be inclined to derive the name of our country from that green, meadow (eng) like appearance which must have caught the attention of the immigrant Jutes and Saxons. At least, such is the surmise of Professor Radix.

"And what road is that ?" I asked, pointing to a very unmacadamized byway through the forest.

"It is called Prest-vei (the Priest's-way), because that is the road the clergyman bas to take to get to one of his distant churches."

"Gee up!" said I to the horse, a young one,

the whip (Svöbe), a compliment which the colt returned by lashing out with his heels.

"Hilloa, Erik! this wont do; it's quite dangerous."

"Oh no, he has no back shoes; he wont hurt you-except," he afterwards added, "out of fun he should happen to strike a little higher."

The ill-omened shriek of a couple of jays which crossed the road diverted my attention, and I asked their Norwegian name, which I found to be "skov-shur" (wood-magpie) in these parts.

As we skirt the western bank of the Kile Fjord, a fresh-water lake, a dozen miles long, and abounding in fish (meget fiskerig), the man points to me a spot on the further shore where the Torrisdal River, after flowing through the lake, debouches by a succession of falls in its course to Vigeland and the sea at Christiansand.

At every station the question is, "Are you going up to the copper works?" These are at Valle, a long way up the valley. They have been discontinued some years, but, it is said, are now likely to be re-opened.

At Ketilsaa I am recommended to call on the Foged of the district, a fine, hearty sexagenarian, who gave me much valuable information respecting this singular valley and its inhabitants; besides which, what I especially valued under the circumstances, he set before me capital homebrewed beer, port wine, Trondjem's aquavit, not to mention speil aeg (poached eggs) and bear ham. Bear flesh is the best travel of all, say the Greenlanders, so I did not spare the last. The superstitions and tales about Huldra and fairies (here called jügere) are, the Foged tells me, dying out hereabout, though not higher up the valley.

His foster-son,* a jolly-looking gentleman, sends off a messenger to see if his own horse is near at hand, in order that I may not be detained by waiting for one at the neighbouring station, Fahret. But the pony is somewhere in the

* Foster-children are as common in Norway at the present day as they used to be in Ireland, where it was proverbially a stronger alliance than that of blood. The old sign of adoption mentioned in the Sagas was knaesetning, placing the child on the knee.