A voyaging day is a big business. We calculate that it takes us two and a half hours to pack up from an old camp, breakfast, and get aboard ship; but to pitch the camp in a new place takes much longer. First you have to find a suitable place, often a matter of great difficulty in a country like this, where level spaces a yard square are very rare; dig a trench; pitch the tent, and arrange everything in it; collect firewood, and make a place for the fire; see that the boats and everything about the tent are safe from harm should the stormy winds begin to blow; and then cook dinner. All this cannot be done under three hours of hard work; so that if in addition you propose getting over a considerable amount of ground, it is sure to be a long and toilsome day. But the following day you wake up with a glorious feeling of duty performed and pleasure to look forward to.
The Skipper, with a hankering after cleanliness, washed a lot of clothes, and himself, having left the rain to perform the latter operation for the last two or three days; but Esau, not being troubled with any such absurd remnants of civilisation, went up the river reconnoitring in his natural condition. He came back to dinner in a perfectly rapturous state, having caught a remarkably nice bag of fish, got a beautiful view of the Jotunfjeld Mountains, and found a waterfall, which he said was the best in Norway, and therefore in the world. The Skipper had tried the lake in the afternoon without success, so after dinner we both went out and soon discovered the reason. Seven boats full of natives were out with a huge flue net, which they shot in a circle, and then beat the water enclosed till all the wretched fish were in the net. We saw them get thirty in one haul, and besides this there was a boat ‘ottering;’ and although we captured a few fish, it was obvious that with all this netting it would be impossible for the lake to be good.
[CHAPTER VII.]
HAPPINESS.
July 22.—
This was a really fine day, such as we consider proper to Norway; no uncertain half-and-halfness, but a day when an untiring sun shone down from an immaculate sky; and everything looked lovely. Our tent was on a nice bit of turf close to the Vinstra River, which is about as broad as the Thames at Eton, but with probably twice the volume of water, and certainly three times its rapidity; it rushed past our door at such a pace that no boat could stem it; and as far as we could see up the reach it came down in an equally swift torrent, so that all day and all night there was a swilling, rushing sound very pleasant to hear, and creating a sensation of coolness in warm weather. Esau considered it just the beau ideal of a trout stream, for any fish hooked in it gave a lot of trouble before he was safe in the bag. It ran into the lake about a quarter of a mile from our tent, forming a good-sized delta at its mouth. At the further side of the delta there were some fishermen’s huts (from which emanated the seven boat-loads of natives whom we saw yesterday netting), and thence a track leads up the banks of the river to a lake called Slangen, two miles away.
The inhabitants of these huts came in a boat this morning to see our camp while we were at breakfast inside the tent. They poked their heads in, grinning and staring, and saying nothing. Then we did the honours, showed them our most interesting possessions—American axes, fly-books, knives, rods, &c., with all of which they were greatly impressed; then one picked up a bar of yellow soap that was lying on a box, and they all ‘wondered much at that;’ then we talked to them for a brief space, chiefly out of ‘Bennett’s Phrase Book,’ and considered the interview at an end, but they would not go, and remained silently staring at all our movements. So at last we ignored their presence altogether, which we have found the most effectual way of getting rid of a Norwegian peasant, and they gradually departed one by one till only one was left. To this man we gave a cup of our now cold coffee, which was not at all good, especially when compared with the delicious coffee which is always forthcoming even in the meanest Norwegian hut. He drank this, for they consider it a breach of etiquette to refuse proffered food; and immediately left, as if he remembered an engagement, having first thanked us in a rather constrained manner.
We were glad when our callers were gone, for we had found them ‘difficult,’ as the French say; but we took advantage of their arrival to make arrangements with one of them to bring three ponies and sleighs to the other side of the delta to-morrow morning, when we hope to renew our journey.
After this we both went up the river on opposite sides; for the Skipper had become inflamed by a wish to see the waterfall which Esau discovered yesterday.
One of the great advantages of Norway consists in being able to leave your tent and all other belongings quite to themselves, even when you know that there are several people about, and shrewdly suspect that the place where you have made your camp is a hay meadow belonging to one of them. We had a dim idea that such was the case here, not because there was any grass, but because there were very few stones, and a Norwegian mows down everything for hay except the stones. The Skipper came back with a very pretty bag of fish; he had been up to the fall, and thought it quite deserved all Esau’s commendation; and his opinion is worth more because he has seen many of the great American falls and other stock sights of the world. It is not marked on the Ordnance map; there is no path to it, or near it, but you come on it suddenly by following the river up through the pine forest, and on turning a corner see the whole body of the Vinstra shooting over a cliff in one mad leap of perhaps a little more than a hundred feet. Of course the height and volume of water are insignificant compared with many falls, but the beauty of its situation can scarcely be excelled; and to us its greatest charm is its solitude and freedom from paths, tourists, and all the other unpleasant attributes of show places.
Esau following up the north bank of the river was not so successful fishing, and after crossing the Slangen River (which joins the Vinstra about a mile above our camp) he struck across the forest to see his beloved fall again, and try to sketch it. He came back in a bad temper, saying that he thought Ruysdael and Turner could make something of it—the former to do the water, and the latter the spray, mist, rainbows, and roar—and he wanted to write home and get them to come out on purpose; and when the Skipper suggested that they had given up painting, he said it was a great pity, for he had not time now to do it himself.