His crust of bread and liberty.”
“You may laugh,” said the Parson, “but the time will come when you will find out certain disagreeables in a Norwegian dwelling, which may make you think with less contempt on the hollow tree.”
“The Parson is of the same mind as the Douglas,” said the Captain, “he likes better to hear the lark sing, than the mouse squeak.”
“I like clean heather better than dirty sheep-skin,” said the Parson.
“And musquitoes better than fleas,” added the Captain.
“Bother the musquitoes: I did not think of them.”[18]
“They will soon remind you,” said Birger, “if we happen to encamp near standing water.” And he went on packing his knapsack to the tune of “Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot,” which he whistled with considerable taste and skill.[19]
Arrangements, such as these, are soon made; the three boatmen were left in charge of the camp, with full permission to get as drunk as they pleased; and, before Jacob had well stretched his legs, which had been cramped in the boat, he was stretching them on the mountain-side, marching a good way in the rear of the party, and grumbling as he marched.
The mountains, which, all the way from Christiansand, hem in the river, so that not even a goat can travel along its banks, at Mosse Eurd and Wigeland recede on both sides, forming a sort of basin; and here, in a great measure, they lose their abrupt and perpendicular character. Close by the water-side, there are a hundred, or two, of acres of inclosed ground comparatively flat, and either arable or meadow; not by any means in a ring fence, but spots cribbed here and there from the fjeld, which looks more like a gentleman’s park than anything else, with these little paddocks fenced out of it. The houses, too, are quite the picturesque houses that gentlemen in England ornament their estates with, so that the untidy plank fences seemed altogether out of character with the scenery. What one would look for here, is the neat park palings of England, or its trim quickset hedges.
Beyond this, the ground becomes more broken and wooded, but without losing its parkish character; it is something like the forest grounds of the South Downs in England, only broken into detached hills and deep rises, with, occasionally, a bare ridge of rock forcing its way through the short green turf. The forest was mostly birch, with a few maples and sycamores, and, here and there, a fir; but every tree big enough for a timber stick, had long ago been floated down to the boom at Christiansand. The character of the whole scene was prettiness rather than beauty. The mountains, however, were no lower than they had been further down the river; it was as if their perpendicular sides had, in some antediluvian age, given way, and that, in the course of centuries, the fragments had become covered with trees and verdure.