At Kirkestuen we quitted the track for the night, having made fifty miles in about ten hours. This, according to our experience, is a fair rate of progression in Norway; in fact, the traveller is more likely to find the average below this than above, unless he drives the good little ponies faster than they like to go, which is wrong.
Here the three women who kept the station were immensely amused because we asked for coffee with our food, and one of them took upon herself the task of rebuking us for such dissipated habits, and explained at great length that no respectable people ever did such a thing. ‘Coffee,’ she said, ‘should only be drunk during the day, gruel after sunset.’ But we persisted in our reckless demand, and they finally gave in, and produced the delicious compound that may be expected at any wretched little dwelling throughout the country.
This was the first place where the papered rooms and iron stoves of modern Norway obtruded themselves on our notice; but in spite of these we were very comfortable, and think that Kirkestuen deserves all the praise which we cannot find lavished upon it in any of the guide-books: it is cheap, comfortable, and clean, and the food is excellent. If the three young ladies who preside over its arrangements wish to send us any little remuneration for this advertisement, we are agents for several Central African Missions, to which we could hand it over; or, as ‘best aquavit’ is a good deal appreciated by the missionaries themselves when they are suffering from certain diseases peculiar to the Central African climate, we would receive that liqueur in cases of not less than three dozen in lieu of money.
[CHAPTER XXXV.]
DOWN TO CHRISTIANIA.
September 21.—
The steadily improving weather of our homeward journey is very pleasant, and already we are beginning to almost forget those ‘Miseries in Cold and Grey’ which were so conspicuous during our last few days at Rus Vand.
To-day we noticed that the whole population of the country appeared to be engaged in the seductive pastime of potato-digging. One family that we passed consisted of papa, mamma, and eight children of different ages, all absorbed in this pursuit. The parents had gardening tools, the elder children were using pickaxes and trowels, the younger ones fire-shovels and wooden baking spades, and the mere babies were hard at work with spoons and toasting-forks.
Here and there we detected a few people still making hay, presumably because they had no potatoes. In Norway the hill-sides are so steep and rocky that there is not overmuch room for the cultivation of grass, so they have to collect it from every available corner where a few sprays of anything green can contrive to exist. As we have mentioned, they are now curing grass on the house-tops, and to-day we saw a man with a scythe about eighteen inches long, mowing in amongst the stones on the river bank, and in some of the places where he went the scythe blade was the only blade visible to the naked eye. One thing seems certain, that a Norwegian will make hay while the sun shines, even if he can only find rocks out of which to make it.
On this part of our journey we passed a great many spotted black and white pigs: these pigs move with a greater dignity of bearing than the ordinary white pig of Scandinavia, and altogether seem to consider themselves superior to him, although they have not a curly tail. Personally we think there is a certain subtle charm about the curly tail of the white pig, a something that sets him off and renders him more pleasing to the eye of the beholder than is a spotted pig with a straight tail. However, our humble opinion does not seem at all to affect the swagger of the spotted pig.
Near Formö we overtook a rosy-cheeked girl of about eighteen, astride a bare-backed pony: the pony was seized with a spirit of emulation, and insisted on accompanying the carioles for some distance in spite of her efforts to stop it.