July 29.—
A friend of ours began the opening chapter of his virgin novel with the words ‘It was a thoroughly cussèd morning towards the latter end of July.’ The same applied exactly to this morning: but the arrival of Jens encouraged us; and Esau walked outside to look at the sky; where, thrusting his hands in his pockets and lodging an eye-glass in his eye, he focussed the heavens generally, with a cruel, inquisitive stare; and shaking his head knowingly, indulged in a prophecy concerning the weather—‘that the wind now being in the west, there would be continuous sunshine for three weeks at least.’ Then he walked in again, and we all shivered over the fire.
Jens arrived at breakfast-time, and after greetings had been exchanged, reported all his achievements on our behalf. He had secured for us a stalker, one Öla, a hewer of wood and drawer of water, by name Ivar (his last office seems likely to be a sinecure, but we can work him double at the first-mentioned employment), a horse, and a sack of potatoes; all of which will arrive at Memurudalen in time for August 1. We hoped for a dog for Ryper, but he had not been able to get one.
Esau is always bemoaning the law which prohibits him bringing dogs from England; it is suspected that he has a large collection of useless animals there, that he wishes to import into Norway and sell to the guileless and unreflecting native. Unassisted by any of the canine tribe, however, we have now accumulated what we call ‘a good larder of bird-meat;’ for certain wild fowl were observed to-day to secrete themselves in the marsh at the head of the lake, whither we followed them with all our dread artillery, and we now have a lot of teal, greenshanks, sandpipers, and a ring dotterel stowed away and engaged in preparing themselves by decomposition for our consumption. Some of these birds are almost unknown to the table of the ordinary Briton; but if he will consider that our daily food depends entirely on what we shoot or catch, we hope, as the writers of books say, ‘the kind reader will excuse’ the sandpipers and dotterel.
We were wet through on the marsh, and not at all sorry to return to a comfortable fire in a warm room, instead of the streaming sides of a cold and cheerless tent. Shooting as we did above our knees in water, the rain did not make any appreciable difference in our great wetness. After the point of saturation is past, we have discovered that the human frame is as impervious to moisture (external) as a macintosh.
This summer so far has been remarkably wet and cold for Norway, but we have now the inexpressible consolation of knowing that they are in worse case at home; for we have received our first batch of letters and papers from England, which have been a fortnight en route.