A MOUNTAIN WALK.
CHAPTER IX.
A MOUNTAIN WALK.
Steamboat Service—A Night in a Mountain Sæter—Primitive Accommodations—A Talkative Farmer—Riding Horseback under Difficulties—An Exhausting Tramp and a Trial of Patience—Up the Geiranger Fjord to Merok—Approach to Hellesylt.
The steamboat service in Norway is excellent. The larger steamers run along the coast, and up the principal fjords, carrying the mails and freight, and are fitted with comfortable passenger accommodations.
The captain, mates, and purser all speak English, and often the stewards and others employed about the steamer understand English; we found them social and obliging, always ready to answer questions and impart information, and the captains were especially agreeable and well informed. These steamers run at frequent and regular intervals, and it is the boast of the Norwegians that their steamers deliver their mails with as much regularity, and as little interruption, as the railway mail service in other countries.
Upon the numerous narrow fjords penetrating far inland is a service of smaller steamers, mostly running during the summer months, occasionally taking extra routes for tourists. They run at stated but not frequent intervals, and in planning a trip through Norway it is necessary to give considerable study to the “Norges Communicationer,” a publication giving the time tables and routes of all steamers and the few railways in the country; and happy is the man who can arrange his journey so as not to lose a few days while waiting, at a little out-of-the-way place, for a steamer.