Having said thus much, it is unnecessary to say more. Rugged grandeur is the main feature of Norway.
On a lovely summer’s evening, not long after the departure of the Snowflake from Bergen, our three travellers found themselves trotting through a wild glen on each side of which rose a range of rugged mountains, and down the centre of which roared a small river. The glen was so steep, and the bed of the torrent so broken, that there was not a spot of clear water in its whole course. From the end of the lake out of which it flowed, to the head of the fiord or firth into which it ran, the river was one boiling, roaring mass of milk-white foam.
Fred Temple and his friends travelled in the ordinary vehicle of the country, which is called a cariole. The Norwegian cariole holds only one person, and the driver or attendant sits on a narrow board above the axle-tree.
Of course it follows that each traveller in Norway must have a cariole and a pony to himself. These are hired very cheaply, however. You can travel post there at the rate of about twopence a mile! Our friends had three carioles among them, three ponies, and three drivers or “shooscarles,” (This word is spelt as it should be pronounced) besides a small native cart to carry the luggage.
Their drive that day, and indeed every day since starting, had been emphatically up hill and down dale. It was, therefore, impossible to cross such a country in the ordinary jog-trot manner. When not ascending a steep hill, they were necessarily descending one; for the level parts of the land are few and far between. In order, therefore, to get on at all, it was needful to descend the hills at a slapping pace, so as to make up for time lost in ascending them.
There was something delightfully wild in this mode of progressing, which gladdened the hearts of our travellers, each of whom had a strong dash of recklessness in his composition. There was a little danger, too, connected with it, which made it all the more attractive. Frequently the roads were narrow, and they wound along the top of precipices over which a false step might easily have hurled them. At the foot of many of the roads, too, there were sharp turns, and it was a matter of intense delight to Sam Sorrel to try how fast he could gallop down and take the turn without upsetting.
The Norwegian ponies are usually small and cream-coloured, with black manes and tails or white manes and tails; always, from some incomprehensible reason, with manes and tails different in colour from their bodies. They are hardy, active animals, and they seem to take positive pleasure in the rattling, neck-or-nothing scamper that succeeds each toilsome ascent.
The shooscarle is usually the owner of the pony. He may be a man or a boy, but whether man or boy he almost invariably wears a red worsted nightcap. He also wears coarse homespun trousers, immensely too long in the body, and a waistcoat monstrously too short. He will hold the reins and drive if you choose, but most travellers prefer to drive themselves.
During the journey Fred Temple usually led the way. Norman Grant, being a careless, easy-going, drowsy fellow, not to be trusted, was placed in the middle, and Sam Sorrel brought up the rear. Sam’s duty was to prevent straggling, and pick up stray articles or baggage.
On the day of which I write the three friends had travelled far, and were very sleepy. It was near midnight when they came to a steep and broken part of the road, which ran alongside of the foaming river already mentioned, and, turning at a sharp angle, crossed it by means of a rude wooden bridge.