John went on a general tour of mountaineering and prospecting in search of scenery, and came back delighted with himself, having made a higher climb than usual, and seen Nautgardstind in all the perfect beauty with which the newly fallen snow had endowed him.
It has already been mentioned that John does not like walking uphill, and when he makes a self-sacrificing and voluntary ascent as he did to-day, he comes home brimming over with an excess of conscious virtue which does not pass away until the genial influence of a good meal and a pipe has reduced him to the level of all humanity.
On his way home he heard a feeble squeak in a bush, and peering in discovered a small animal which he at first took for a guinea-pig; but soon, perceiving that it must be a lemming, his natural impulse was to poke it with a stick. This was his first interview with one, though they are common enough up here; and he is disposed to think them morose in disposition; but really he ought to have recognised the fact that the thin end of a walking-stick is not a means of intercourse at all likely to arouse the sympathy of any animal, least of all that of a juvenile lemming, who is obviously overcome with drowsiness, and wants to be let alone.
The winter is now coming on apace, and already every fall of rain down here is a snowstorm in the mountains, and every clear night means a biting frost up there. Esau, scaling the heights of Bes Hö with Jens in search of deer, found none on account of the mist, and in addition to the danger of getting lost, a new peril was added by the snow. It appeared that during the night a severe frost had immediately followed the rain and coated everything with ice, then snow had fallen to the depth of three inches, and on the top of that rain and sharp frost again. The result was that at every step they broke through the crust of ice on the top, and sank through the three inches of soft snow on to the lower stratum of ice. This was all very well as long as they were on rough ground; but the snow making every place look the same, in one instance they got on to one of the steep little glaciers which are common on Bes Hö, without knowing that they had done so: and suddenly Jens lost his footing and began to slide downwards at a terrific speed. It seemed to Esau that he would shoot straight down into Rus Vand, looking very blue and cold three thousand feet below; but a friendly boulder intervened, and by its assistance, and by spreading himself out like a gigantic spider, he managed to arrest his wild career, and they got safe across the treacherous glacier.
They had to cross another on their return, which was done with fear and trembling; but although the difficulties of this kind of stalking when unaccompanied by deer may seem to outnumber the pleasures, still occasionally they were on fairly safe ground, and could get their hearts out of their mouths for a few brief moments. At such times the splendid view of all our old Gjendin mountains rising tier after tier behind each other, a boundless sea of peaks and domes and jagged crags, all robed in purest white, with the sun lighting up the virgin snow almost too brightly for the eye to rest on; the keen frosty air; and the solemn stillness, only broken now and again by the twittering of a flock of snow buntings, amply repaid them for the arduous climb.
Then a few minutes of glorious excitement as, by the aid of glissades, they shot down the steeps that it had needed hours of hard labour to surmount, and they were back on the shores of Rus Vand, where at present the snow had hardly begun to lie.
In spite of the cold we had some first-rate fishing, and Esau caught a trout which he asserted to be the very best fish for shape, condition, and colour, that ever came out of Rus Lake, or anywhere else. Though not as large as many we have caught, being only 2½ lbs., it certainly was a beauty, and resembled the perfect fish that are occasionally seen in an oil painting, but very seldom encountered in tangible, edible form.
The Rus trout, like those of Gjendin, are quite silvery, almost as bright as a salmon, but with a few pink spots instead of black ones, and uncommonly pretty they look when fresh out of the water.