or any other of the little complex words that an educated Norwegian can construct. It is wonderful to hear the natives launch out into one of these cataracts: they do it fearlessly, and steer through the whole with unflagging fortitude, and very seldom with any fatal results.
The hay harvest seemed to be quite finished except on the roofs of the houses, where some people were still cutting and carrying their crops. The barley had just been reaped, and was now being dried by the process of impalement, a dozen sheaves, one above the other, being transfixed by a pole stuck into the ground, just as a naughty boy sticks a row of moths on a long pin, or as the unfortunate Bulgarians were supposed to be exhibited during the ‘atrocity’ scare. Can it be possible that those stories arose from the distant contemplation of a barley-field?
The Norwegians also dry their hay in a different manner from that usually practised in England. They erect high hurdles made of larch poles in lines at intervals all over the field, and on these they hang the hay to dry as we hang towels on a horse, and it is by this means so well exposed to both air and sun that it dries very quickly. No doubt the hurdles are also very useful in spring as a shelter for the young lambs.
The weather kept improving so much that we grew quite jubilant, and the ever-changing scenes that opened before us seemed full of life and brightness, and we looked with a certain amount of pleasure on even the magpies, which sat on the fences in scores, pluming their black-green feathers, and talking things over quietly to themselves. So different from the wary magpie of England, who, knowing that he is an Ishmael, glories in the fact, and shrieks defiance to mankind at the top of his voice and a tree.
For three hours we followed the brawling Sjoa through scenery that would bear comparison with Switzerland, and then we reached the spot where it joins the mighty Laagen, and crossing the latter by a picturesque but discouraging bridge, soon struck the main road, and pulled up for our first change of ponies at Storklevstad, nineteen miles from Bjölstad.
At another place further on we found a shop kept by a Norwegian Yankee, and entered it to buy some sugar-candy, wherewith to appease our cariole-boy. This storekeeper informed us that the emigration from Norway to the States was enormous just now, especially to Minnesota and Wisconsin, and that no less than sixteen men had gone this year from the little village of Vaage—a place which does not strike one as being likely to contain that number of able-bodied men at one time. Öla had told us that five of his brethren were in Minnesota, but that he himself had no intention of leaving his native country; and this we thought to be well, for if he were to join them we are convinced that any enterprise in which they might be engaged would inevitably fail with his invaluable co-operation and assistance—unless perhaps the Skipper could be induced to go out there and occasionally exhort him.
At Listad we lunched off a real white tablecloth; that is to say, we ate not the cloth, but everything eatable that was placed on it.
We also found a note from the Skipper asking us to bring along one or two little things that he had been obliged to leave behind in his hurried flight, just as the allied armies kept finding Napoleon’s belongings at different places after Waterloo. The present loot consisted of a coat, sleeping rug, and a towel.