“And Miss Marit makes splendid coffee, and thoroughly understands how to cook a beefsteak.”
“Ja!”
“And Miss Marit would make a most excellent wife for any young gentleman who could succeed in winning her affections!”
“Nei!” said the young lady, blushing again, and looking more astonished than ever.
“Ja,” said I, “it is all in print”—adding, with an internal reservation, “or ought to be.”
Who can blame me for paying tribute to Miss Marit’s kindness and hospitality? She is certainly deserving of much higher praise than that bestowed upon her, and I hope Mr. Bennett will pardon me for the liberal style of my translation. If he didn’t mean all I said, let the responsibility rest upon me, for I certainly meant every word of it.
The farming districts are limited chiefly to the valleys along the river-courses, and such portions of arable lands as lie along the shores of the Fjords. A large proportion of the country is extremely wild and rugged, and covered, for the most part, with dense pine forests. The peasants generally own their own farms, which are small, and cut up into patches of pasture, grain-lands, and tracts of forest. Even the most unpromising nooks among the rocks, in many parts of the Gudbransdalen Valley, where plows are wholly unavailable, are rooted up by means of hoes, and planted with oats and other grain. I sometimes saw as many as forty or fifty of these little arable patches perched up among the rocks, hundreds of feet above the roofs of the houses, where it would seem dangerous for goats to browse. The log cabins peep out from among the rocks and pine-clad cliffs all along the course of the Logen, giving the country a singular speckled appearance. This, it must be remembered, is one of the best districts in the interior. The richest agricultural region is said to be that bordering on the shores of the Miösen. One of the comforts enjoyed by the peasants, and without which it would scarcely be possible for them to exist in such a rigorous climate, consists in the unlimited quantity of fuel to which they have such easy access. This is an inconceivable luxury during the long winter months; and their large open fireplaces and blazing fires, even in the cool summer evenings, constantly remind one of the homes of the settlers in the Far West. When the roads are covered with snow the true season of internal communication commences. Then the means of transportation and travel are greatly facilitated, and the clumsy wagons used in summer are put aside for the lighter and more convenient sledges with which every farmer is abundantly provided. All along the route the snow-plows may be seen turned up against the rocks, ready to be used during the winter to clear and level the roads. In summer the means of transportation are little better than those existing between Placerville and Carson Valley.
