Snow Plough.
The ponies were packed with their curious birch-twig saddles, waterproof sheets for cork bed, deer-skins and air cushions, provisions, a small spade to trench round the tents, cooking canteen—a great work most cunningly carried out by the Tentmaster—lint, chlorodyne, &c.; steel nails to screw into boots for ice-work, vanters, or mufflers, long flannel night-shirts for cold, blue spectacles for snow, a little glycerine, telescope, compass, &c. Our beds were made with Iceland moss, waterproof sheet, cork mattress, and skins, and we slept in thick socks, gloves, and long flannel night-shirts with hood to keep off the flies. Hans Luther was with us, and Trophas the faithful, the doggie with sharp nose and curled tail. The tents had been sent up to the fjeld before us, and, after about six hours’ walk, we spied the white dot—the tent. In making the ascent to the upper plateau the gradual decrease of vegetation was very noticeable, culminating in the reindeer flower, or Ranunculus glacialis, which is much liked by the reindeer. Happy and buoyant with hope the hunter who finds the flowers nibbled off! Their peculiarity is to grow most freely where the snow has melted back. At the tents we found Ole of Lesje, whose first news was that he had seen a herd of about fifty reindeer, after which an important subject was mooted: a glutton had been seen the night before near the tent. Danjel Kulingen had been thirteen years after reindeer, and had never seen one. On the other hand, Hans Luther had shot one, and there was a skin at the station at Mølmen, which reminded us that at fishing inns on the banks of the Thames larger fish are seen stuffed and glazed than the itinerant angler generally hooks and lands.
All at once the dogs, three in number—Trophas, Barefoed, and Storm—opened a barking chorus; but we did not seize our rifles, as the telescopes revealed our Paymaster-general, who was returning from his chasse de bagage, which he had happily recovered. The aneroids registered 5,000 feet, and all was full of promise, save the one fact that the rifle of our friend was below in the valley. The despair and ferocity engendered by this unhappy discovery were soon dispelled by good food, and plenty of it, a word of comfort and sympathy, and last, not least, a little whiskey, after which he took a siesta in his tent, on which we wrote “Requiescat in pace,” and left our cards as a welcome. Being Sunday, we made it quite a day of rest, and revelled in the flora, mosses, and lichens of our new ground, always, however, with an eye to the glutton, which evidently had a day of rest also, as he never appeared. In the evening, at 6.30, we had a hunters’ chorus, for the Norwegian Sunday terminates at six o’clock.
NORGES HERLIGHED.
Words by I. N. Brun..
Bor jeg paa det høje Fjeld, hvor en Fin skjød en Ren med sin Rifle paa Ski-en
hvor der sprang et Kildevæld, og hvor Ryperne pladsked i Li-en. Jeg med
Sang vil mane frem hveren Skat som er skjult udi Klip-pernes Rif-ter, jeg er gladog rig ved dem, kjøber
Vin og klare-rer Ud-gif-ter. Klippens Top som Gra-nen bær, muntre Sjælers