“The breezy call of incense breathing morn,” in which the same poet revels, was much more to my liking; indeed, one sniff of it made me as fresh as a lark, and I picked my way to the house by the lake side, and enjoyed my coffee. The little boy, Oiesteen Torkilson, though only eight years of age, has not been idle, and has procured a man and horse from a distant sæter. The price asked is out of all reason, as I don’t hesitate to tell the owner. Before the bargain is struck, I jot down a few remarks in my journal. With the inquisitiveness of her nation, the woman asks what I am writing. “Notices of what I see and think of the people; who is good, and who not.” Out bolts the lady, to apprise the man of her discovery that “there’s a chield amang ye taking notes, and faith he’ll print it.” My device succeeded. Presently she finished her confab with the peasant, and returned to say that he would take a more moderate payment.
I observed here, for the first time, the difference between the two words “ja” and “jo.”
Have you seen a bear?—“Ja.” Haven’t you seen a bear?—“Jo.” I have met educated Norwegians who had failed to observe the distinction. A perfectly similar distinction was formerly made in England between “yes” and “yea.”[7]
CHAPTER VI.
No cream—The valley of the Maan—The Riukan foss—German students—A bridge of dread—The course of true love never did run smooth—Fine misty weather for trout—Salted provisions—Midsummer night revels—The Tindsö—The priest’s hole—Treacherous ice—A case for Professor Holloway—The realms of cloud-land—Superannuated—An ornithological guess—Field-fares out of reach of “Tom Brown”—The best kind of physic—Undemonstrative affection—Everywhere the same—Clever little horses.
The path, I find, is at a higher level than I imagined, for, on reaching a sæter, no bunker (sour milk, with a thick coating of cream) is to be had, as the temperature is too low, the girl tells me, for the process of mantling to take place.
The horse being exceedingly lazy, I administered a rebuke to him, when he was not slow in returning the compliment, striking me with his heels in the thigh. Luckily I was close behind him, or the thread of my story might have been abruptly snapped.
Pine now begins to take the place of birch, and we descend very rapidly into the valley of the Maan, pronounced Moan. To our right, among the trees, is heard the roar of the famous Riukan foss, which at one perpendicular shoot of nine hundred feet, discharges the waters of the great Miösvand and other lakes into the valley.