TRAVELS ABROAD
CAMPING IN NORWAY
After a delightful little voyage in one of the smart Wilson Line steamers, I arrived one morning early in Christiania, the capital of Norway.
The town is an ordinary Continental town, but stands on the shores of an arm of the sea which is so shut in by wooded hills for some twenty miles that it is more like an inland lake than a gulf of the ocean.
What a place for Sea Scouts!
One of the first Norwegian boys to attract my attention was a Boy Scout—so like an English Scout that he may have been one for all I know, but I was not able to speak to him, I was catching a train, and he was going off in a hurry in another direction, evidently in trouble, as he was whistling and smiling! And it is difficult to tell a Norwegian boy from an English boy by his appearance, for they are very much alike.
And so are the girls and young women very like their British sisters. But then, as we all came of the same blood in bygone times, it is not altogether surprising.
Then their Royal Family is related to ours, for Queen Maud, the wife of King Haakon, is sister of our own King.
So Norwegians have much in common with the English, and since my visit Scouts of the two countries have become good friends and camped with each other.
There could be no better country than this for camping out. As you come through it in the train, you keep passing among wooded hills and then alongside rivers and lakes; a great deal of wild country with occasional cultivated parts where there are neat little wooden farmsteads and villages.
The houses are painted bright colours, and are roofed with tiles or shingles, that is, wooden slates, as in Canada. In fact, with its forests, lakes, and rivers, and their floating timber, and the sawmills, the country generally is not unlike Canada.
As wood is so abundant here, farm Scouts will be interested to see from the picture how they make their fences in place of hedges or ordinary post-and-rails. It is a kind of fence that you can make easily with almost any kind of slats or with brushwood or branches.
[Illustration: A NORWEGIAN FENCE.]
A way which the Norwegian woodmen have of piling their small timber in the woods in order to dry it is one which might also be useful to Scouts when making a bivouac-hut, where there are plenty of saplings. You pile them as shown in the picture, all with their butts or thick ends together to windward, and thin ends splayed outwards.
When you have got this frame together you can cover it with a waterproof sheet, or straw mat, or brushwood, to keep out the weather, and light your fire opposite the opening.
In my camp I had one friend, George.
[Illustration: AN EASILY-MADE BIVOUAC HUT]
We found a good site on the bank of a rushing roaring river between high hills covered with forest. We were thirty-five miles from the nearest railway station, and about four miles from a farm, where we got our butter and our milk. The river supplied our fish, and we shot our own game.
We carried just enough kit to make a load for a pack-pony—a bundle of about 50lb. weight on each side of him. There were no roads, and a pack-pony is the only means of carrying heavy luggage, such as tents, etc.
We each had our bivouac tent, bedding, change of clothes, cooking pots, and fishing rods, etc.
Of course, we did our own cooking, woodcutting, and cleaning up. And cleaning up is a very important part of camp work.
Our camp was small and never likely to be seen by anybody besides ourselves, but it was always kept very neat and tidy, and we could shift camp at any moment, and leave scarcely a sign that we had been there. That is how Scouts should always have their camp—everything in its place, so that you can find anything you want at a moment's notice in the event of a sudden turn out in the dark, or for shutting up for a sudden rain squall.
All scraps of food should be burnt or buried, and not thrown about round the camp. On service these scraps would be good "sign" to an enemy's scouts as to who had occupied the camp, and how long ago, and how well off they were for provisions, and so on.
Another reason against letting your camp ground get dirty is that it quickly becomes the camping place also of thousands of flies. If you have flies in camp it is a sign that the camp is not kept clean.
* * * * *
A CAMP BEDROOM.
I have made a sketch of my tent, which, as you will see, is a kind of hammock with a roof to it, slung between two trees. This form of tent keeps you dry in wet weather or on swampy ground; you never have to lie on the ground, you can get snakes and other nice visitors crawling into your bed. The cot is long enough to hold your kit as well as yourself.
It is kept stretched out by two side poles and a ridge pole. These can be cut in the wood where you camp, and the cot itself, with bedding and kit inside, can be rolled up in the waterproof, and this forms a neat roll for half of the pack-pony's load.
The cot is springy and most comfortable to sleep in.
When you are ill or wounded it makes a very good stretcher, the side poles forming the carrying handles. In the same way, when you are dead it makes an excellent coffin, as the sides and ends fold in, and can be laced over the body. I have not tried it myself in that way.
Another advantage which I have twice found the cot-tent to have was, when a tornado visited camp, and all the tents were blown down into the mud, my little cot was swaying quietly in the wind—it cannot blow down.
In the drawing you see also, besides my bedroom (in the cot), my dressing-room, my drawing-room, and my bathroom—in fact, my whole residence.
The dressing-room was where my fishing waders are hanging up to dry, together with my shaving-glass, hat, and holdalls.
Over the cot are hanging my overcoat and moccasins and towel. My drawing-room was the rug on which I sit, my writing-case lying there ready for use.
[Illustration: MY CAMP RESIDENCE IN NORWAY. My cot-tent will be seen in the centre of the picture.]
My bath was down below, through the trees, in the river!
My whole house was carpeted with a beautiful soft springy moss, so dry that a match dropped on to it would soon set the whole forest in a blaze.
So we had to be very careful about our camp fire.
* * * * *
THE CAMP FIRE.
We made our kitchen near the river, where this dry moss did not grow.
A camp fire for cooking is not a bonfire. A tenderfoot never remembers this; but an old campaigner can be recognised by the smallness of his fire; he does not waste fuel. In the woods there may be plenty of timber, but he is not going to waste time, energy, and axes in cutting down piles of firewood when he can make a few handfuls do equally well; and if he is out on the plains where firewood is almost unknown, he has to do with a few roots of grass, or bits of cow-dung, etc.
Then a big roaring fire, though it looks very cheery, sends off sparks, and in dry camping weather these are very dangerous, whether in the woods, or on the heather, or among the grass.
[Illustration: MY CAMP KITCHEN.]
We began our fire by, first of all, collecting a heap of firewood, chiefly dead branches from trees; then by laying a few shreds of birch-bark between two good flat stones of equal height (about six inches), and on these we laid a few bits and splinters of dry wood taken from the inside of a dead tree, and on that just two or three small dry sticks, and then set it alight. As it burnt we gradually added more small sticks till it was a good strong little fire, then we added more and more sticks, the object being to get the space between the stones gradually full of glowing red-hot bits of wood to give heat to the cooking pots, which we then stood on the two stones so as to bridge over the fire.
The great art is to begin with a very small fire and a very dry one. You can then add to its size as you please later on, and when it is going strong you can add damper wood if dry wood is scarce. Birch-bark cannot be found everywhere, but it is the best of lighting tinder when you have it.
The channel between the stones is much better if laid so as to face the breeze. The fire can then be kept going at the mouth of it, and the heat will blow through; a bigger kind of log can be put in from the other end to catch fire and add to the heat in the channel.
Of course, there are plenty of other ways of making fires, which you can read about in Scouting for Boys, but this is the particular kind of cooking fire that we used in my Norwegian camp.
At night, when we had cooked our supper and the night was getting chilly, of course, we put on big logs laid across each other, and so got a big, star-shaped fire to make a blaze to warm us,
But we kept a good watch on any sparks to see that they didn't touch the moss or heather, and when we turned in, we trod out the fire and poured water over the whole of the ashes, so as to prevent any chance of embers blowing out into flame again during the night and setting light to the grass.
Scouts cannot be too careful in this matter, especially in England, where landowners are very good at lending their ground to troops for camping, but are naturally very nervous all the time lest by some carelessness a grass fire may get started, and thousands of pounds' worth of timber or property get burnt.
Early in the morning we were to leave our rest-house near the railway in order to drive (and partly to walk) to the place where we were going to make our headquarters. This was forty-nine kilometres distant. How many miles is that?
As kilometres are generally used abroad for telling distances, a Scout ought to know how to compare the two and here is a simple way of doing it: Multiply your number of kilometres by five and divide the result by eight, and you will have the number of miles. Thus:
We want to know how many miles our forty-nine kilometres are.
49
5
—-
8)245
—-
30 5/8 or about 30 1/2 miles.
As I have said, we were to leave early, but we found that the
Norwegian idea of early is not so very early as with us in England.
They thought eight o'clock breakfast very early, and the cart, which
was supposed to start at nine, did not get away till 10:30.
It was a little ramshackle sort of dogcart with a very high seat, which just gave standing room for us among our baggage, while the boy in charge of the pony hung on as best he could behind.
The pony was fine and strong and fat, but awfully sedate; in fact, it was only after a lot of persuasion that we got him to move at a trot, and then it was a marvellously slow trot.
However, I found that if one showed him the spare end of the rope reins, and offered to strike him with it, he mended his pace considerably. He kept his eye on me all the time—
The Norwegians seem to be very kind to their animals. They don't use whips or blinkers or bearing-reins on their horses and before we had gone very far the boy in charge considered it time to unharness and feed his horse for a few minutes. We walked on while he did so, and as it wasn't for an hour and a half that he overtook us again, we guessed he had given the horse a very fine feed indeed.
[Illustration: THE HORSE KEPT HIS EYE ON ME ALL THE WAY.]
We didn't do ourselves badly, either, because all along the road, which ran through beautiful woods along the hillside, we found lots of excellent raspberries growing wild.
We changed ponies half-way: but when we had got nearly to our journey's end, the boy said he must stop and feed the horse. We said: "No; it is only four or five miles more, and the pony will be home." But the boy began to cry at our cruelty, so we had to stop and let the horse graze. It was very pleasing to see that they are so kind to their animals.
I have said that I was not one day in Norway before I saw a Boy Scout. Well, I was not two days in the country before I saw a Girl Guide. Correctly dressed in the same kits those in England, with her patrol ribbons on, she was taking lunch at the rest-house where we stopped for ours. Unfortunately, she could not talk English, so we could not have a chat, as I should have liked.
It is a grand thing for Scouts who care to travel that Boy Scouts are now to be found in most foreign countries, because you have only to make the secret sign a few times in any town, and you will get an answer, and find a brother Scout ready to help you.
In Norway, especially, they seem likely to be very useful to British Scouts, because they are very like British boys, except that they have much more practice in woodcraft.
A large proportion of them live in wildish country, among the forests and lakes, and so they know how to look after themselves; they are nice, cheery fellows. They are very clean, and they speak the truth. Well, that means a great deal, because you can trust a fellow who speaks the truth, and, what is more, you can trust him to behave well in danger or trouble.
I find that men who tell lies in peace time are not among the bravest in war; and telling a lie is, after all, a bit of cowardice—the fellow who tells it is afraid to speak the truth, or he hopes to get something in return for what he says, if he can only get the other fellow to see the question as he wants him to.
Well, that's a sneaking way of doing it. A manly fellow will speak out, and always say exactly what he wants or what is the real state of the case; he will be believed and will generally get his way. In any case, show me a liar, and I can show you a "funk-stick."
* * * * *
HOOKS AND POT-HOOKS.
You may be interested in a picture of our camp on the Allalaer River in Norway. The shelter was rigged up with a waterproof sheet and a few poles cut in the forest.
Inside this shelter you see our store-cupboard; in other words, a box turned on end, with a bit of the lid made into a shelf. In this we stored our bread, coffee, sugar, and such things.
Then down on the left of the sketch is a small log bridge over a stream. Under this bridge we kept our milk, butter, and fish; it made an excellent ice-cold larder.
Next we come to the chopping block, an old log on which we chopped firewood into the right size. If you chop wood on the ground you will very soon blunt your axe, so always use a chopping-block.
And when you have finished chopping, leave your axe sticking in the block; this preserves its edge from getting rusty or knocked by stones, etc. It also preserves your toes from getting cut by stumbling over an axe in the dark.
[Illustration: MY CAMP ON THE ALLALAER RIVER IN NORWAY.]
Next we come to the important part of the camp—the fire. You see we made the fire between two big flat stones. These were useful for standing the frying-pan on, and cooking billies, etc. The fire is made at the windward end of the channel, between the stones, so that the heat blows into the channel, while the fire forms a pile of red-hot embers outside, at which toast can be made.
Notice our automatic toast-makers, made of a forked stick and a small supporting fork.
[Illustration: MY TOASTING-FORK.]
Then over the fire we had a crossbar of green wood (if you use old wood it will catch fire and drop your pot into the fire just as the stew is ready); it was supported on two stout, firmly-driven forked stakes, not the wobbly, rickety things which tenderfoots like to put up.
On the crossbar our kettle was hung by a pot-hook—just a hooked stick with a good notch cut in it to take the handle of the kettle.
Also on the crossbar in the sketch you see our tongs. These are most useful things for a camp-fire for lifting hot embers into the spot where you want them for giving extra heat.
[Illustration: MY AUTOMATIC KETTLE-HOLDER.]
The tongs are made from a green stick of hazel, or alder, or birch. The stick should be about 2 1/2 to 3 feet long. At the middle you cut away a good bit of the wood from one side for about 4 inches. Then cut a number of small notches across the grain of the wood to make it still more bendable at the centre. Here's the side view of the centre part of your stick.
[Illustration: THE TONGS BEFORE AND AFTER BEING BENT.]
Then flatten the inner sides of your stick towards both ends, so that they get a better hold on things; bend the two ends together and there you have your tongs:
Next to the tongs, in the sketch, you see a small branch of dwarf fir. This makes a hearth-brush, which is very useful for keeping the fire neat and clean.
The ordinary-looking stick leaning against the crossbar is an ordinary sort of stick, but a very useful one. He is the poker and pot-lifter. He should be a stout green stick not easily burnt. Poplar is a difficult wood to burn, but then many old hands won't use it, because it is said to bring bad luck on the camp-fire where it is used; but that is an old wife's story, and I always use it when I get the chance.
If the soup gets upset, I look on it as my fault, not the fault of the poplar poker. In fact, whatever wood the poker is made of, one always seems to get a kind of affection for him. He is only an ordinary ugly, old half-burnt stick, but he is jolly useful and helpful.
On this side of the fire you see the pile of wood that has been collected for fuel. It is generally the right thing when in camp for each camper, when coming in, whether from bathing, or fishing, or anywhere else, to bring with him some contribution to the wood-pile.
Different kinds of wood are needed for it.
First you want "punk" and "kindling"—that is, strips of birch-bark (which are better than paper for starting a fire), dry fibre from the inside of old dead trees, dry lichen or moss, anything that will start a fire. And also small, dry splinters, chips, and twigs to give the flame for lighting the bigger wood.
Secondly, you want lots of sticks, about 1/2 to 1 inch in thickness, for making your cooking-fire of hot embers, or you can get bigger logs, from which you can afterwards knock off, with our friend the poker, red-hot embers for the cooking.
Remember, you don't want a great blazing fire for cooking, but one that is all made of red-hot lumps.
For warming you up and giving a cheerful appearance to the camp at night you can have any amount of big, dry branches and logs—the drier the better for a good blaze.
Beyond the fire, in the sketch, you see our dining-table and seat. This is a plank set across a hole in the ground, and the table is another plank beyond it. That is one way of making a dining-table.
Another way to make seats and tables in camp, especially in a country like this, where the forest is full of fallen timber, is to go and look out for a suitable pine tree with branches so placed that by a little lopping with an axe you can make a trestle like this:
[Illustration: HOME-MADE SEAT.]
Two such trestles can be made to support a few split saplings, or a number of stout straight rods, which can then be nailed, spiked, or lashed down with cross-battens to form a table; and more such trestles can form the seats.
On the right of the sketch you see three forked uprights. These formed our rack for holding fishing-rods and landing-nets.
The little tufts hanging on this rack are bunches of heather.
Did you ever hear the yarn of the Boy Scout who, at his school examination in natural history, was asked, "What is heather?" He replied, "Well, sir, it is what we clean the cooking-pots with in camp."
He was quite right, though perhaps the examiner did not think so.
A few bunches of heather are most useful as dishcloths for cleaning dishes and pots. The reason why they are hanging on the rod rack is that they are handy for use in the scullery, which is that part of the river close by the rack.
In using a river you always have certain spots told off to the different uses. First and highest up-stream you get your drinking water. Next is your handwashing place (not bathing place) and scullery for washing plates and cooking-pots.
Below that is the refuse place, where you throw away scraps off the plates and from cooking-pots, and gut your fish. This should be where the stream will carry away the scraps and not slack water, where they will collect.
Of course, this throwing of refuse into the river only does in a wild country or where the river is big. In most English camps, all refuse should be buried in a pit or burnt.
I think that describes the whole of our camp.
Oh, no, there is still one article—and one of great importance Alongside the tent you see our camp besom or broom. It is made of a few birch twigs bound together. (The long thin roots of the fir-tree make very good cord.) This we used for sweeping the camp-ground every morning when we tidied up.
When we left our camp, the last thing we did after everything was packed ready for moving was to go round and tidy up the whole ground, and burn all the scraps, chips, and twigs that were left on the ground. So when we left it would have been difficult for a stranger to say that anybody had been camped there except for the place where the fire had been. But we left the cross-bars, pot-hooks, and wood-pile there, so that anyone coming after us would find them ready for his use.
[Illustration: A FISH CARRIER]
But I expect they will all have rotted away before any one else comes that way to camp, for it is in an out-of-the-way corner where very few travellers come.
Another hook I might, mention is one used for carrying your fish when you have caught them. It is merely a twig cut from the nearest bush.
* * * * *
A BOAT VOYAGE
I had heard of a wonderful gorge in the mountains to the west of us, through which no man had ever passed, and George wanted to go "reeper" shooting on the mountain slopes in that direction. (A "reeper" is a Norwegian grouse.) So one fine morning found us starting in a boat to row down the great lake, which would bring us to the foot of the mountains.
This lake is about eight miles long, and one mile wide. Steep, forest-clad hillsides run down to the lake on both sides, and there are not half a dozen farms in sight of it, so we felt that we were getting into wilder parts as soon as we had started on our voyage.
The boats here are only made for one pair of sculls to be used at a time, so it came heavy on each of us in turn to have to row our well-loaded ship with its cargo of two men, two dogs (Bruce and Gordon), and all our luggage, guns, and ammunition.
[Illustration: "I Rigged up my oilskin coat as a sail, with George to act as mast and rigging.">[
Luckily for me, before it came to my turn to row, a good breeze sprang up from behind us, so in a very short time I had rigged up my oilskin coat as a sail, with George to act as mast and rigging, and I took an oar to steer with.
In a very short time we found ourselves running along at double the pace that we could have got by rowing.
On these lakes, though there are plenty of boats, you never see one fitted with mast and sails for sailing. It is too dangerous; sudden squalls come down from the hills and catch the sails the wrong way or too violently, and so capsize the boat before the crew can do anything to save her.
Even on ordinary water, no one but a tenderfoot would sail a small boat with the "sheets" made fast; the men sailing the boat hold these in their hands ready to ease them up at any moment should a squall strike them. But the danger is much greater on a lake among mountains.
So you see a Scout needs to know something about sea scouting if he wants to get about successfully in a country where he has to make use of boats or canoes.
By using an oar as a rudder—which is also understood by Sea Scouts—we found we could sail to some extent across the wind as well as before it, and so we were able to get round headlands which came in our way without having to lower sail and take to rowing.
Another thing to look out for on these mountain lakes is that a bit of wind very quickly makes quite fair-sized waves, which, with a heavily loaded boat, may lop in over the side, if your helmsman is not very careful, and swamp the boat. So it is foolishness for any Scout to go on this sort of expedition unless he can swim.
In fact, every Scout ought to be able to swim; he is no use till he can, and he will always find it useful to know something of sea scouting.
The oars of Norwegian boats are worked not in rowlocks, or crutches, or between thole pins, as at home, but on a single thole pin, to which they are attached by a "strop" or loop.
This is a useful dodge to know of in case one of your thole pins breaks, as sometimes happens.
[Illustration: How the oars in Norwegian boats are worked.]
In Norway, the strop is made of a stick of birchwood (hazel does equally well), which is first twisted and twisted round to such an extent that it is as flexible and as strong as a length of rope, and is tied by twisting its ends round itself, as shown in Scouting for Boys.
A Scout should be able at any time to twist a stick into rope, but to do it successfully he must know which kind of wood to pick out for it. That is one reason for knowing the different kinds of trees by sight.
While we sailed along we trailed a line astern of us with some tempting-looking flies on it in the hope that we might get a trout for dinner.
Suddenly, just when we were in the middle of a busy time over a squall of wind, there came a tug, tug, and a pull at our line. All was at once excitement.
"Down mast and sail!" "Reel in the line!" "Hold the boat with the oars!" "Don't let him break away!"
Steadily he is hauled, kicking and rolling over in the water, and at last he is safely lifted into the boat—a fine, silvery, speckled trout.
"What a dinner he will make!"
"How would you like him, grilled, fried, or boiled?"
Alas! we thought a good deal about what sort of dinner he would make.
And he did make a dinner, too—but not for us!
We presently heard Bruce crunching and munching something. He had not waited for the fish to be fried, or grilled, or boiled. He just ate him as he was. We only had bread and butter and coffee for dinner that day—without any trout. We didn't even mention trout during the meal. We didn't seem to want any, or we pretended we didn't.
Still, we had a very jolly dinner at a beautiful spot where we landed on the shore of the lake. Then after a further bit of sailing and rowing we reached the end of the lake.
Here we hauled up our boat high and dry, leaving all her gear in her, for nobody steals things in Norway. We "humped our packs" on to our backs, and, with rod and gun in hand and the dogs trotting alongside, we started up the hills through the forest, bogs, and rocks, to get to the farm three miles away, where we were to spend the night at the foot of the mountains.
* * * * *
THE JASJVOLD SAETER.
That means the name of the farm where we stopped, and we made it our headquarters for several days.
"Saeter" means "summer farm." The Norwegian farmers are mostly dairy and cattle farmers, and in the summer they take their herds up on to the high ground for the grazing, and bring them back into the lower and warmer valleys in winter.
Our farmer at Jasjvold was named Slackman; and he was a slack man to look at—very wild and unkempt, with a tousled head of hair, and a rough beard; clothed in a blue jumper, and breeches and rough stockings, and carrying a big knife in his belt, he looked as if he could and would willingly slit your throat while you were asleep; but on Sundays he was a very different character.
[Illustration: THE JASJVOLD SAETER.]
Even away up here in the mountains, far away from any neighbours, he did not forget to keep the Sabbath, and he appeared very clean and smart, neatly dressed, with white collar and tie, hair and beard trimmed, and altogether so different that at first glance I did not recognise him on Sunday morning.
But, in spite of his wild week-day appearance, he was a most cheery, kind-hearted man, always anxious to do good turns for us, and to help us in every way. In the evenings he would come and sit with us, eager to teach us Norwegian, and equally anxious himself to learn English. So we got along splendidly together.
The saeter is a group of farm buildings; each one is a separate single-storied log house. There is the farmer's house, the house for guests (in which we lived), the men's house, the dairy, the bakehouse, and the "staboor," which is a kind of hayloft, stable, and manure shed all in one. Being built on the side of a hill, it has three storeys on one side, and only one or two on the uphill side.
The hay is put into the top storey, and can be dropped down through a trapdoor into the stable, which is on the second floor. Then the stable is cleaned out through trapdoors, which let all the dirt fall into the lower storey, from which it can be carted away to manure the fields.
A curious thing about most of the Norwegian farms is that there are no muddy cart tracks to be seen, the grass is green right up to the doors. Then there are no chickens about the place, as a rule; nor are there beehives, nor any garden. The carts are very small and low, sometimes on wheels, sometimes on runners, as sledges. The harness is very light, and yet strong; the driver walks behind the cart and drives the horse with a long pair of rope reins.
[Illustration: THE CARTS ARE SMALL AND LOW.]
Our house in the saeter was, like all the others, a single-storied log house, with a roof of planks covered with birchbark, over which is spread a thick layer of earth, which soon becomes grass-grown, so that it looks as if the roof were made of turf.
There were three or four rooms in the house, nice, clean rooms, with comfortable beds, and a great big open fire hearth in the corner, in which you light up your log fire whenever you like to have it—and we liked it pretty nearly always, for at this height, nearly 4000 feet, close to snow-clad mountains, the evenings and early mornings were very cold.
On our door was a big lock, and a lock in this country is not boxed up inside iron casing but is left open to view, so that you can see how it works, and get your fingers pinched in it if you like to be careless.
The farmer's wife, a kind, cheery, clean, motherly woman, was always cooking up good things for us, and feeding us to such an extent that if we had stopped there much longer we should have grown too fat to carry out our expedition.
She didn't understand a word of English, but she used to stop her work every now and then to come and hear us having our Norwegian lessons, and she used simply to howl with laughing at our attempts to pronounce the words the right way.
The food she used to give us is much the same as you get everywhere in Norway. For breakfast, which is generally about nine or ten o'clock (we persuaded her to give it to us much earlier), you have a cup of coffee and two or three glasses of milk, home-made bread, and a kind of thin oatmeal cake, butter, and goats'-milk cheese.
[Illustration: THE LOCK ON OUR DOOR.]
Dinner is usually about three in the afternoon, but we never had any, as we were out all day, and took bread and coffee with us. Supper, at nine o'clock, was much the same as breakfast, with the addition of trout, or soup, and stewed fruit and cream, again with milk to drink.
There was one girl, who waited on us and did all the work of the house. I never saw any servant do half as much as she did, and yet she was always neat and clean and smiling.
She chopped our firewood, made our beds, greased our boots, waited at table, scrubbed the floors, tables, and chairs every day. You never saw a place so clean, If I were sitting at a table writing when she was on the scrub, I was politely requested to lift my feet up while she did the floor beneath them!
Then there was a boy at the saeter, who, though he could not speak a word of English, was a very nice English-looking lad.
He was in charge of the pony and cart, and his two ponies were the cheekiest, tamest things I have seen. They would follow you about like dogs, and seemed to understand what you said to them. That was all due to kind treatment by their young master.
This boy used to be sent off on long journeys over very rough country in charge of the cart. Then sometimes he would milk the cows and goats. Whenever he had any spare time he would take down his great 18-foot rod, and go fishing for trout, and generally he brought back some good ones, too. Then he was a handy carpenter, and understood mending a boat and sharpening tools on a grindstone. All these are things which a Scout should be able to do, but I wonder how many of them an ordinary boy in England can do.
Then, sharpening your tools is a very useful thing to practise for putting an edge on to your axe or knife.
There is a saying among Sikh soldiers in India, when speaking of any bad act, that it is "as disgraceful as having a blunt sword." A Sikh always keeps his as sharp as a razor. It is a disgrace to him if it is blunt.
So, too, a woodman would never be seen with a blunt axe or knife in camp. He would never get through his work if he had them. Yet I often see Boy Scouts go into camp with axes so blunt that they will cut nothing, and their knives very little better. You don't know the pleasure of handling an axe till you have used a really sharp one.
And then every Scout ought to know how to sharpen his own axe on a grindstone. You must wet the stone first, and then get someone to turn it, running the wheel away from you, while you lay the blade with its back towards you, and its edge in the same direction as the wheel is moving, and pass it gently on to the stone, doing each side of the blade in turn a little at a time until the whole blade becomes bright, especially at the cutting edge.
* * * * *
EXPLORING THE GORGE.
You remember that George and I went to Jasjvold Saeter in order to get some "reeper," and also to explore the gorge of which we had heard.
As you get higher up above the level of the sea, the nature of the country and of the plants changes. In the lower level you get trees and bushes and flowers very much like those in England, but as you rise higher nothing but fir trees, pines, and birch trees seem to grow. Then as you get up a bit the fir trees come to an end, and you find only small birch trees, after which there are no trees.
You come out on the open moorland where there is heather, like that in Scotland, and other small shrubs, one of which would interest boys because it grows a very nice little fruit called "blue-berries." Above the heather, that is, at a height of over 4000 feet, you get what is called moss. This is really a kind of lichen like you see growing on trees at home, a pale, yellowish-white, spongy kind of plant, which seems to thrive on barren, rocky mountain sides, and forms feed for the reindeer which run wild in these parts.
Well, George and I used to go out from the Saeter directly after breakfast each day, carrying our ruksacks on our backs, and one of us a gun and the other a fishing rod in his hand. And the dogs went with us. In our ruksacks we carried a kettle, some bread, butter, and coffee, and a change of shoes and stockings, for what with wading through streams and stepping into bogs we were pretty wet about the feet before the day was ended.
On the first day we went and discovered the head of the gorge, high up on the mountain side, and each day after that we explored a new bit of it till we had followed it down to where it opened on to the valley at its foot.
The gorge was a deep cleft in the mountain-side of dark, frowning cliffs, with a bright, clear mountain stream running along among the rocks and stones at its bottom.
* * * * *
THE TROUT STREAM.
The farmer had told us there were no fish in this stream, and nobody ever fished there. However, I thought I might as well use my rod, having brought it all the way there, so, pretending to myself that there was a fish in a swirling little pool behind a great rock, I crept and crawled to a spot from which I could, unseen by the fish, throw my fly so that it could float quietly in the current and be carried round the corner.
The first attempt from my crouching position was not a good one; the line did not go out far enough, and merely got into a backwater and drifted in close to me so I shortened it up by pulling in a handful or two, and then shot it out again over the water.
This time it fell well out, the thin gut cast falling lightly as a cobweb on the surface, and then sliding off with the current close round the edge of the rock; and just as it went out of sight there was a sudden tug and a steady hold on it! A rock 1 No. The next moment there was a rush and a strain, the rod bending over and showing that a really nice fish was on.
[Illustration: OUR DAILY EXCURSION.]
I won't tell you all the joy that followed in playing the fish till he was exhausted, and then leading him to a smooth shallow, where, having no landing-net, I could draw him steadily and quickly from the water and up the shelving rock without breaking the delicate line. But I got him! And after him we got many more, enough for all our meals. It was a delightful trout stream, and I could only wish that every Scout in the world were there to enjoy it, too.
One particular run of water pleased me particularly. The stream rushed through an opening between some rocks, and then gradually opened over a gravelly bed in a long, rippling current. The "tail of the run," as they call it, is the place to expect fish, so I fished quickly over the rapid part of the run, and went more gingerly when I got nearer to the "tail," making my fly visit every inch of the water, and I was quickly rewarded.
A sudden ting like an electric shock on my rod, and a heavy rushing and jerking hither and thither, till gradually the fish exhausted himself, and I was able to hold him and gradually tow him up on the shelving beach. Out of that one pool we got no fewer than fourteen trout that day! Of course, we only kept those we wanted for food, and slid the others back into the water, alarmed, but not hurt.
* * * * *
STALKING.
After a few miles the gorge got deeper and deeper and more and more narrow, until it ran between high cliffs which could not be climbed, and the stream became a torrent running between the high rocks, so that progress was impossible along the bottom.
We were, therefore, obliged to keep up on the mountainside above the cliffs and make our way along in the same direction as the gorge, occasionally looking down into it to see its wonderful scenery.
On steep parts of the mountain we had to clamber along as best we could, and sometimes it was jumpy work, where, if you kicked aside a loose stone, you could see it go bounding away down into the gloomy gorge below. At other times we were walking on beautifully soft moss, into which our feet sank for several inches; in fact, after a time, with a good load on our backs we began to wish it was not quite so soft! But it made our going very quiet and silent, and we kept a sharp look-out for game.
At one time George was leading the way when we came to a slight rise in front. Like a good scout, he never came to a rise without checking his pace and peeping very carefully over it before going on. This he did more from habit than from any expectation of seeing anything the other side, but it is a most valuable habit, and one which every good scout has. On this occasion it proved its value.
George dropped flat on the ground, and, taking the warning from him, I, too, "squatted" at once, and made the dogs lie down. I did not know whether we had an elk or rabbit in front of us, but presently George crept back to me and reported that there were some duck on a pool a short distance ahead.
He, being the gun-bearer, then started to stalk these duck by going a long way round, keeping behind hillocks and rocks until he could get near enough to be within shot of them. It took him a long time.
[Illustration: "George dropped flat on the ground, and, taking the warning from Him, I, too, squatted at once, and made the dogs lie down.">[
He had a good look at the ground first from our hiding-place, and he noted any peculiar rocks or bushes which would serve as guides to him while he was carrying out his stalk, and off he went, creeping and crawling from one landmark to the next, until at last he wriggled up to the bush which he had guessed would bring him within shot of the birds.
When he got there, he peeped through the stems of the bush, and found that it was not so close as he had hoped—it was scarcely within gunshot; but the duck had already some suspicion that all was not well. They are the cleverest birds alive; they had all stopped feeding, were looking anxiously about, and were beginning to swim away.
George saw that his only chance was to risk a long shot if we were going to have any dinner that day, so, pushing his gun through the bush, he fired at the nearest duck, and, immediately jumping to his feet, he fired again at another, which by this time was on the wing—and he killed both.
Of course the dogs and I both hurried down to him in great jubilation. There were two good fat ducks floating on the little lake. But how were we to get them? Neither of the dogs was a water dog, and the lake was really a wet bog, in which a man could neither swim nor wade.
Luckily, there was a breeze blowing, so we went round to the lee side and sat down to wait for the birds to drift to us. Slowly they came nearer and nearer, but it was very slow work. It became slower and slower as the breeze dropped and at last died away when they were not twenty yards away.
[Illustration: "FISHING" FOR DUCK.]
Then George—again as a good scout would—invented a plan. He took my rod and began to fly-fish for the ducks! That is, he threw the line over a duck, and then gently drew it in so that the hook caught in the bird's feathers. In this way he "caught" both of them in turn and dragged them ashore.
From the open high ground we gradually descended to lower heights. First we came among scattered birch trees, and below these we entered pine and fir woods, and through them we came steadily down to the level of the valley in which lay the great lake.
Just before getting to the valley we dipped once more into our gorge where it finally left the mountains, and it was a grand sight. The cliffs rose sheer up a hundred feet on either side, even overhanging in some places, and the opening between the cliffs was quite narrow, where the stream in a dense body of water rushed its way through in a roaring cascade. It was a magnificent scene.
Just below the cascade the gorge opened out, and the stream spread itself over a shallow, stony bed, in many courses, till it joined the main river in the valley.
George and I clambered down the last cliff, and close to the cascade I made the fire while he went and caught a couple of trout for lunch (we were going to keep those duck for supper at the saeter), and we were very glad of the lunch and a rest.
Then we turned for home by a new road, walking round the foot of the mountain over whose back we had come. But we turned for home in another sense, for that was the turning point of my trip in Norway; I had to go back home to England from there.
On our way back we passed great swamps where there were duck, but we had had enough of them to last us for the present.
In one part of the swamp we came upon the spoor of elk. The elk, you know, is a great big stag—the same as a moose in Canada; a very lanky animal, as big as a horse, with a very blobby nose, and heavy, flat-spread antlers.
It was, of course, very good to learn that there really were elk in the neighbourhood, but it only made me the more unhappy at having to leave the country. George, who had no Boy Scouts demanding his presence, was going to stay on there, so everything that made me more sad made him all the happier—the unfeeling brute!
Still, I can't complain. I think in the few weeks that I was in Norway I had had as good a time as anyone could possibly have. There is no better fun on earth than living in the open and catching and cooking your own grub, in doing mutual good turns with a good comrade in camp, and in recognising God's handiwork in the mountains and forests around you.
* * * * *
HOW TO FISH.
George and I would have gone pretty hungry in our camp and on our tramps while in Norway had we not both been able to catch fish, for there was little else in the woods to eat besides blue-berries (we were now too high up for the wild raspberries which are so good in the valleys).
Every Scout must know how to fish, otherwise he would feel so silly if he died of starvation alongside a stream full of trout. And fishing—like shooting, or cooking, or swimming, or anything else—is not a thing that you can do straight off without having practised it beforehand; so my advice to Tenderfoots is to take every chance of learning how to fish, so that they may be able to do it when they may be in need of fish for food.
Sea fishing, as you know, is generally done with a long line from a boat, with a good lump of lead on the end of the line, and a number of hooks every foot or so up it, baited with strips of fish with the silvery skin left on them.
Then in rivers and lakes you fish with rod and line, with a float to hold the bait at the right distance above the bottom. The hook is on a yard or so of gut line, which is invisible to the fish; this is weighted with split shot or small bits of lead, and the bait is usually a worm, or a grub, or a little bit of bread paste. This kind of fishing is called bottom fishing.
By the way, here is a good dodge for catching worms which every Scout ought to know.
Mix a little mustard powder in a can of water, and then sprinkle the water over a grass plot, and very soon you will see worms coming up out of the ground in a tremendous hurry.
It would be rather a fine conjuring trick to play when people are not up to it—to take an ordinary watering-pot and apparently pour ordinary water on the grass, and then play a mouth-organ or whistle a tune to call up the worms. Someone else will be sure to try it, too, and if you have taken care to empty your can of mustard and water they will put in plain water and will get no result in the shape of worms.
* * * * *
FLY-FISHING.
Then there is a third kind of fishing, and that is fly-fishing. It is the most difficult, but at the same time the most useful, because it is the only way that will do in the rapid rivers and streams with which you meet in the wilds; and also it can be used on lakes and slower rivers, and it is much the best fun.
All the boys in Norway catch their fish by fly-fishing. You have to have a whippy rod with a long line to it, and a long piece of gut (called the "cast") on it, with from one to three hooks made to look like flies on it, these are fixed at about two feet apart.
By using the rod as a spring you can throw the line a long distance to any point you wish, so that the flies will float past the nose of a fish and tempt him to rush out and swallow one.
The throwing of the fly—casting it is called—is at first the difficulty for a beginner, but it comes all right with a little practice. You can learn to do it perfectly well without going to a river and without having any hooks on your line to begin with.
Take a rod, and a line as long as a rod and a half, and try throwing it in a field or road or anywhere—till you can get the line to go out perfectly straight to its full extent on to the ground at the spot you wish. The great points to remember which are the key to success arc these: All the work is done by the tip of the rod, not the butt. Bring your rod back with a little jerk at the end to throw the line back behind you, but don't let the rod itself go back much beyond the upright position.
[Illustration: LEARNING TO THROW THE FLY.]
Before throwing the line forward again, give a pause so that it has time to straighten itself behind you—and that pause is the secret of the whole thing. It must not be too short, or your line will still be curled up when you shoot it forward and will not go out the distance you want, and if the pause is too long it will fall and catch on the ground behind you, and also will lose its spring. That is where practice is so necessary, so that you know exactly how long to pause.
Then an important point to remember is that the jerking of the rod, whether forward or backward, is done from the wrist and only slightly from the elbow, and not at all from the shoulder. A beginner would do well to tie his elbow by a loose strap to his waist, so as to remind him not to wave his whole arm as most beginners do.
All this sounds a good deal to think of, but if you go and practise it you very soon get into the way of it, and fly-fishing is the best sport that I know.
There are two kinds of fly-fishing, "wet" and "dry." Wet fly means that you let your flies sink into the water and you then draw them along under the surface. A dry fly is made in such a way that it floats on the top of the water as many natural flies do, and the fish, seeing it floating there, rises at it. This is the best sport of all fishing, but is also the most difficult to do well.
Of course, it is difficult for some boys to buy rods and fishing tackle, but a Scout ought to be able to make his own as most of these Norwegian boys do.
[Illustration: USING A YOUNG TREE AS A FISHING-ROD.]
Cut a straight, whippy rod of about ten feet, put on a line of strong, thin twine, and a cast of horsehair out of a pony's tail if you cannot get gut, A hook is difficult to manufacture for yourself, though it can be done with a bit of wire and a file; but most Scouts going on an expedition take a few hooks with them as part of their outfit.
When I was out with George, I had to make myself a rod, as we only had one rod between us and I got tired of waiting for my turn with it; but we were high up in the mountains where the woods were thin, so I only got a poor choice of sticks from which to make one.
However, I cut down a likely looking birch sapling and trimmed him down, and he did pretty well; but he was not very springy, so it required more brute force on my part than skilful turning of the wrist to get my line out, But I caught a lot of fish with him all the same.
* * * * *
REPAIRING A ROD.
One day I broke the delicate top joint of my fly-fishing rod by catching the fly in a bush during the back throw.
Well, it's no use giving up fishing because your rod is broken; the thing to do is to set to work and mend it. It is an accident which often happens, especially to a beginner, and every Scout ought to know how to mend his rod.
My rod had snapped off a few inches from the tip, so I took the ring off the broken tip, and, after trimming the broken end of the rod with my knife, I put the ring on to this and thus made my rod workable; but it was just a few inches shorter than it had been before.
This is the way to bind your ring on to the new tip—at least, it's the way I did it, and it served quite well for the rest of my trip.
Having no beeswax, I took some "gum" from the bark of a fir tree and rubbed a thin coating on the rod and on the black silk thread I had with me; then, putting the ring on to the end of the rod, I bound it there with a very careful and tight wrapping of the silk. This I had previously wound on to a stick so as to get a good hold on it for pulling each turn tight.
To fasten the end of the silk, proceed as follows:
[Illustration: HOW TO BIND THE RING OF A FISHING-ROD ON A NEW TIP.]
After winding from A steadily up towards the point B (about an inch), when you have still about half a dozen turns to do, make a big loop of your silk C, and lay the loose end of it, B D, on the unbound bit of rod, and go on binding over it until you have reached the point B with your thread as in the sketch. You then pull D and the loop C gradually closes in till there is nothing left of it. Then you cut off the loose end D close to the rod.
Put a coating of gum or varnish over the whole to make it fast and watertight, and then you have your rod as strong and as sound as ever.
* * * * *
FISHERMEN'S KNOTS.
In order to be able to fix your hook on to your line and to join up the different bits of line, you want to know how to tie your knots; but in addition to those which you have learnt as a Scout there are several more which come in useful for a fisherman.
I will only give you one or two here, but there are many others. These are drawn half tied, just before pulling tight.
Here is the overhand loop:
[Illustration: KNOT]
To join a line to a loop do it this way:
[Illustration: KNOT]
Much the same kind of knot is used to tie a hook to a line:
[Illustration: KNOT]
To join two lengths of line together, even when of different thickness, follow out this method:
[Illustration: KNOT]
* * * * *
KILLING FISH.
The Scout Law says that you should not kill God's creatures without good reason. It is allowable when you need them for food. In the case of fishing you often catch them when practising, but you need not kill every fish you catch; you can take them carefully off the hook and put them back into the water.
The hook as a rule catches them in the lip, which with them is not the tender flesh that it is with us, but merely a lot of bones held together by gristle, so they do not suffer pain as we should—and this is shown by the way the same fish will come on again after having been already caught.
When you want to keep a fish that you have caught, you should kill him at once and put him out of his misery, and this you can do either by hitting him on the head with a stick, or by driving your knife into his brain, or by putting your finger down his throat and then bending his head backwards and breaking his neck.
* * * * *
CLEANING A FISH.
Then when you have killed your fish you will want to cook him.
First of all you must clean him—that is, take his insides out. The stomach and guts of the fish are carried rather far forward in his chest, so with your knife you cut across the narrow bit of skin which joins his chest to his chin, and with the point of the knife underneath the skin slit the skin of his chest and belly open as far as the fin near his tail. Then cut through the gut in his throat and the whole of his insides will be let loose to fall out.
But before doing this, if you have slit the belly neatly it is interesting to look at the wonderful insides which he carries—the heart, and lungs, and liver, and intestines, all beautifully arranged and kept in their place and protected by the delicate ribs. It is a wonderful piece of God's work, and when you come to find that each trout that you catch is made exactly in the same way, and just the same as a trout that you may catch in New Zealand on the opposite side of the world, you begin to understand what a wonderful Creator there must be Who makes us all, and gives this wonderful kind of machinery inside the body, which keeps life going for us.
* * * * *
HOW TO COOK YOUR FISH.
There are many ways of cooking your fish. The usual way is to fry him in a hot frying-pan. A slit should be cut in each side of the fish, as otherwise the heat is likely to burst his skin. A little salt and a pinch of mustard put in with the butter in the pan will add to his flavour.
But the simplest way, for you don't generally carry frying-pans with you when you go fishing, is to cut a long stick that bends at an angle of forty-five degrees. Cut one arm to about one-third the length of the other. Trim the short arm with your knife till it is fine and pointed; pass this through the fish's mouth and then through the flesh near his tail, and toast him by the fire, back downwards, with a small lump of butter and a pinch of salt and mustard powder in his inside. You will find him very good eating! A clean, flat stone makes a good plate.
* * * * *
THE FISHERMAN'S HAIL.
There, now I've told you how to catch and kill and cook your fish, I hope that you will soon be able to do it, and I wish you the old salutation which every fisherman wishes to another when they start out to fish, "A tight line to you," meaning that I hope you will get a big one on.