“And who is Ambrose?” inquired I. “Where is his Stöl? I see no symptoms of one.”
“Stöl! bless you, langt ifra (far from it). He is a flytte-maend. He comes up on the mountain with a lot of horses and Nöd (Scoticè nowt, horned cattle), for about six weeks in the summer. He has a bag of meal, and he lives upon that and the milk of one milking cow, which he has with him. At night, he sleeps under a rock or stone, flitting about from place to place, wherever he can find grass for the cattle. He receives a small sum a head for his trouble, when he has taken them back safe and sound.”
Hard life of it, thought I. Bad food and worse lodging; not to mention that the beasts of prey occasionally diminish the number of his charge, and with it the amount of his earnings.
After toiling along for twenty English miles of treeless wilderness, skirting several lakes, floundering through many bogs, and sitting on the horse as he forded one or two rivers, we reached a knoll, which the guide called Grodhalse. It was a curious spot: itself green and smiling with grassy herbage; behind it, higher up the slope, patches of unmelted snow; while at our feet ran a rill of snow-water.
“We must qvile (i.e., while = rest) here a bit,” said Ole. “There is no other grass to be found for many miles.”
“Well, then, light a fire in a moment,” said I, a cold shudder running through me the very moment I stood still, and I at once enveloped myself in my pea-coat, buttoning the collar over my ears. “Fill that kettle with water, and have it boiling as soon as ever you can. Here are some matches.” The green prickly juniper scrub, which he forthwith dragged up by the roots, soon blazed up with the proverbially transient crackling of fire among the thorns; and the little copper kettle which I had prudently caused to be brought soon succeeded in first simmering and then boiling. Dickens’s kettle on the hob never uttered such delightful music.
If I had been philosophically inclined, and had possessed a thermometer, which I did not, I might have availed myself of the opportunity of ascertaining the exact height we had reached, by seeing at what number of degrees the fluid boiled. But what was much more to the purpose, I had some tea at hand, and two quarts of the hot infusion, with a thimblefull of brandy, were soon under my belt. Never did opium, or bang, or haschish-eater experience such a sweet feeling stealing over the sense. Talk of a giant refreshed with wine: give me tea when I am knocked up. The chemistry-of-common-life people will talk to you about Theïne and its nutritious qualities, but until that moment I did not know what tea would do for you. My eyes, which just before were half blind, saw again. My blood, which seemed to be curdled into thick, heavy lumps, in my veins, was liquified afresh. That of St. Januarius never underwent such a quick metamorphosis. Mr. Waterton will excuse the allusion.
The knoll was at a very high level; the snow behind us, and the icy runnel issuing from its bowels at our feet, gave a keenness to the air, but the tea[8] put me in a genial perspiration, the pea-coat aiding and abetting by keeping in the caloric. And when the little horse, refreshed by his nibble, was caught and reloaded, I loaded my fowling-piece, and felt quite strong enough to carry it. Before long we were among some grey ptarmigan, and I brought one or two down.[9]
“Curious spot, this,” said I, to the guide, as we came to an amphitheatrical ridge of abraded rock, on the very edge of which rested huge blocks[10] of stone, some pivoted on their smallest face. The cause of the phenomenon was evident. The glacier power, which formerly moved these stones onward, day by day, had been arrested—opera imperfecta manebant—and so the blocks came to a stand still where they now are. “They must have been placed there by the Trolls,” I observed, giving a peep at Ole’s countenance. “Kanskee” (perhaps), was his slow and thoughtful reply.
“You ought to see this in winter time,” he continued. “No stones to be seen then—no impediments. We go straight ahead. I travelled last winter, on snow-shoes, sixty miles in the day.”