At eight o’clock we were en route up the valley, and at length came in sight of the steep, dark, and pointed mountain called “Kirken,” or “Church Mountain.” This mountain reminded us very much of the “Trifaen Mountain,” near the gloomy lake called Llyn Idwal, in North Wales, which we once ascended. Even the barren sterility of the “Trifaen,” and the shores of Llyn Idwal, and the “Devil’s Kitchen” above; the stony wastes of the glyders, and the rugged pass of Llanberis, have no scenes of extreme desolation, and absence of vegetable and animal life, similar to some of the wilder Norwegian valleys through which we wandered. “Kirken,” we were told, had never been ascended. Had time permitted, we should have been much tempted to have spent some days on the shores of the lake near.
Alas! the Norwegian summer is too fleeting. When we came up the valley, near the Leir Vand, which is 4736 feet above the sea, Ole proposed that the party should cross the Lera. It was a tolerably wide, rapid, broken stream, where the donkeys had to cross.
Ole and myself went some distance up the river, and Ole soon crossed. We were preparing to do so, when we saw Mephistopheles, mounted on the top of his loaded donkey, stemming the rapid waters of the Lera in the distance below.
The loaded Puru Rawnee was also bravely struggling in the rapid current of the river for the other bank.
Then, as we turned again, we saw Esmeralda’s blue feather flaunting in the wind, as, mounted on the baggage of her loaded donkey, she was plunging across the rough bed of the river, when, oh! the Tarno Rye has made a false step! Our baggage gone—saturated and spoilt! Instantaneously, a fearful splash: Esmeralda is tumbled into the river, and the baggage saved.
Are those sounds of suppressed lamentation we hear from Ole and Mephistopheles, on the bank of the Lera? It seemed to us more like laughter than anything else we ever heard.
We were too far off to render assistance, before we saw the dripping form of our high-spirited gipsy girl rise from the cold icy waters of the Lera. Esmeralda looked like a beautiful Nereid—a wild water-nymph. Her long raven hair, now without a hat, glistened with the falling moisture of a thousand spangles in the sun. Will no one plunge in to help her? Would we were there! Now she has reached the shore. Crossing the river we were soon with our party. Esmeralda was very wet. Although the stream was not very deep, falling in as she did, her clothes were completely soaked. The straw hat and blue feather, carried off by the stream, was recovered some distance below.
The cold waters of the Lera had not improved the temper of our hobbenengree. We offered her our best consolation, and at once proceeded en route as the best means of drying her clothes. Her amour propre had been touched by the laughter of Noah and Zachariah.
Ole, with his usual tact, went as far in advance as was compatible with his duties as guide.
Mephistopheles, in his most insinuating tones, said: “Dawdy, wouldn’t the Rye have gone into the panee to save his Romany Juval? Wouldn’t you, sir?”