We had a delightful voyage up the Mjösen, on the most beautiful of Norwegian summer days, in the best of Norwegian steamers. The Mjösen is the largest Norwegian lake, about fifty-five miles long, and the guide-books say it is 1,440 feet deep, but we had not time to measure it, as we were busy admiring the scenery on the saloon table most of the way. This steaming up the Mjösen is a very pleasant way of spending a fine day: the shores are nowhere strikingly beautiful, but always pretty and charming; the steamer goes fast, so that there is a sensation of getting on and not losing time. There are intervals of mild excitement whenever we come to a village, and take up or disembark passengers; generally speaking they come out in boats, but occasionally we come to a larger and more important place where there is a pier, or even a railway, and at these the excitement is greater and the crowd quite worthy of the name. The folks all take off their hats directly we get within sight, and continue to do so till they fade away or sink below the horizon; and we in the steamer all do the same. But the great attraction is undoubtedly dinner, which is uncommonly well served in the saloon, every luxury that can be obtained being placed before us, concluding with wild strawberries and cream of the frothiest and most captivating appearance.
Both on this boat and her sister the ‘Kong Oscar’ they take great pride in doing things well, very much as the old mail-coaches which occupied a parallel position in England used to do. The ‘Kong Oscar’ is rather the faster boat, but we consider the captain of the ‘Skiblädner’ to be lengths ahead of his rival, being a first-rate old fellow; on the other hand, the ‘Skiblädner’ handmaidens are not comely, whereas they of the ‘Kong Oscar’ are renowned for their beauty, not only in Norway, but in certain stately homes of England that we wot of. Esau lost his heart to one of them two years ago, and still raves about her, though the only way in which he endeavoured to win her affection was by sitting on a paddle-box with his slouch hat tilted over his eyes, gazing at her with mute admiration from a respectful distance, while she, alas! was totally unconscious of his passion. He never told his love, because he could not speak Norse.
We arrived at Lillehammer about eight o’clock, and went to the Victoria Hotel, from the flat roof of which, after an excellent dinner, we enjoyed a pipe and one of the prettiest views, in a quiet homely style of prettiness, that any one could wish to see: just at our feet the wooden village, with its many-coloured houses and their red roofs; then some green slopes, and 100 feet below the vast extent of the Mjösen lying calm and still and looking very green and deep, with the landing-stage and deserted steamers apparently quite close below us. On the opposite side of the lake highish hills covered with fir trees, and to the right the river Laagen with its green waters hurrying down from the mountains in a broad and rapid stream as far as the eye could reach. Just across the road in front of the hotel there is a nice little stream which turns a saw, and rejoices in a cool splashing waterfall, the soothing sound of which refreshes us by day and night. The same torrent can be seen higher up the mountain in a place where it makes some rather fine falls, which only look like a long white rag fluttering amongst the trees at this distance. This was the view we had at midnight, when it was, apparently, no darker than immediately after sunset, and a good deal lighter than it generally is in London at midday; the while the sky was covered with the rich glow of colouring which can only be seen in the Northern summer.
There were two Englishmen with us on the roof, with whom, aided by coffee, we roamed over the greater part of the civilised and uncivilised world—Australia, Canada, Japan, Turkey, and Ceylon, and we all agreed that none of them can ‘go one better’ than a summer night in Norway.
[CHAPTER IV.]
BY ROAD.
July 14.—
We arose pretty early, wishing to get over thirty-eight miles of ground before evening, which with the canoes would be a long day’s work; as we had the natives to contend with, who by reason of their dreadfully lazy habits are most difficult to ‘bring to the scratch.’
We have decided, after long experience, that nothing that you can do has any effect in hurrying them; but that it is quite possible to make them slower by losing your temper, or taking any vigorous measures of acceleration. They seem to get more deliberate and aggravatingly slow as they grow older.
Norwegian boys are distractingly restless and full of energy, and look as if they have had nothing to eat, which is generally the actual fact, judging by an English standard of what constitutes food. At the age of fifteen they become better fed, and their energy departs altogether, and after entirely disappearing it keeps getting less every year. A full-grown man does not seem to need much food, certainly not as much as an Englishman, and prefers that of the worst kind, conveyed to the mouth at the end of a knife-blade. We have never noticed any description of food which he does not make sour, rather than eat it when sweet. Bread, milk, cream, and cheese, jam and cabbages, for instance, are articles which he prefers fermented or sour. He reminds one of the cockney who complained that the country eggs had no flavour, or of the Scotchman who, replying to the apologies of a friend in whose house he happened to get a bad egg, said, ‘Ma dear freend, ah prefair ’em rotten.’
But his laziness and love of nasty food are almost the only bad qualities that we have discovered in him. He is ridiculously honest,[*] and his kindness and hospitality are beyond praise. This morning, however, the laziness was the quality chiefly conspicuous, and though we ordered our conveyances last night and got up early (for us), we did not succeed in starting till twelve o’clock.