September 18.—
How strange that our return to the haunts of men should be chiefly marked by the sparseness of the fare provided for breakfast! A tin of sardines took the place of the usual trout; and although Ransværk consists of a group of several sæters, and almost attains to the dignity of a village, and our quarters were in the largest and most imposing mansion, there were no forks or spoons to be obtained, and we had to fish our sardines out of their native oil with a Tollekniv, assisted by a finger, and convey them to our mouths with the same implements.
After breakfast Esau and Jens turned out in pursuit of capercailzie, which abound in the forest here; but though they persevered until three o’clock, and got several shots, the annoying birds all ‘went on,’ as an English keeper generally says when you ask, ‘Did you see if I killed that rabbit?’
Esau had used up all his large shot at ducks up at Gjendin, and his cartridges were perfectly ineffectual at such a strong bird as the capercailzie. Besides this, they are extremely wary, and always rise about thirty yards from the shooter; they fly quite straight, and so are very easy to hit; but though Esau knocked clouds of feathers out of them at every shot, and did bring one to the ground which, from the closeness of the underwood, could not be gathered, he was obliged to submit to disappointment for once.
In one part of the forest they heard a raven shrieking angrily (‘skriking,’ Jens called it, which has the same meaning in North country dialect), and going to the place were in time to see a goshawk gliding swiftly away with some victim in its grasp. In another place there were a lot of squirrels, which Jens induced Esau to shoot for some purpose of his own. What that purpose was we could only guess by seeing him gather a bunch of beautiful wild currants and some flowers just before reaching the sæter, and then brush his hair and march out with his bouquet, berries, and squirrel-skins to some place unknown.
Soon after three o’clock we resumed our march, and almost directly quitted the good Vaage road along which we travelled last night, and took to a cow track on the right. The cart with the canoe had a very rough time of it for the first five or six miles, jolting and bumping in and out of holes, bogs, and ruts, and over boulders and logs in a most appalling manner; then we had a piece of decent road again, and at the finish another mile of rough track.
Soon after starting we passed the sæter where Jens lives when he is not hunting in the mountains, and Esau wishing to see what kind of snow-shoes they use in this part of the country, Jens ran up to the house and fetched his ‘skier.’ To give an idea of the absurd honesty which prevails here, we noticed that though Jens had been absent from home for the last two months, and the windows were shuttered up, yet the door was only latched; and after the inspection of the snow-shoes, Jens would not trouble to take them back, but simply left them by the side of the road, to wait his return three or four days hence.
Another instance illustrating the same simplicity occurred to us once when travelling in quite a different part of Norway. When changing carioles at a station our baggage was all heaped together on the road-side, and as we wanted to stay there an hour or so for dinner, and this was a main road with a fair amount of traffic, we suggested to the landlord that our goods had better be brought inside the station. He merely looked up at the sky with a weather-wise eye, and replied, ‘Oh no, I’m sure it won’t rain.’
Our route to-day through the forest was most beautiful, at one time descending to the level of the Sjoa, and even struggling along its bed where the going on the bank seemed to be inferior, at another climbing up and up and ever higher, until we stood on the summit of the range of hills which confine this valley on the northern side. It is called Hedalen, and is one of those strikingly beautiful half-cultivated Norwegian dales which occupy the space between civilisation and the untouched realms of nature.
This evening, the setting sun throwing a rich golden glow over the scene, and lighting up the brilliant autumnal colours of the trees, gave us an opportunity of seeing it quite at its best.