"I'll be shot, if it isn't the old doe again!"
Panting from fatigue, and the unflagging speed with which she had travelled, the deer, with her fawn, came close to us, and tamed by weariness, stood within a foot of the Norwegian.
"Kommit," he said; "salt; kommit, kommit," and filling his hand with salt, the animal came near, and devoured it greedily, and allowed the Norwegian to pat her on the neck and shoulder.
The extreme fondness of the rein-deer for salt cannot be better exemplified; for this animal had followed us from her natural abode on the top of the mountain to its base, and could not have performed a lesser journey than twenty miles. She approached us with so much confidence, and licked our hands with that domestic affection which is so winning in dumb animals, that we declined to accept and take her from her native haunts; but strove by every discordant noise and angry gesture to drive her back to the mountains. With the same care, however, that the deer had avoided us, she now sought our society, and did not leave us until we had reached the precincts of the village, and leaping a high, wooden fence that separated it from the forest, we gave her the alternative of doing as we did, or remaining where she was. With the decorous conduct of her sex she made not the attempt; but during the hour we wandered about the sleeping village in search of some boatmen to row us back to Auron, we could hear her lowing piteously. We had descended the eastern side of the mountain, and arrived on a southern branch of the Sogne Fiord.
Day now began to dawn; and though we had hardly eaten or drank since our departure the previous morning from Auron, the freshness of the early air, the balm of mountain flowers, and the beautiful face of nature, afforded new vigour to our frames, and in feasting the mind we nourished the body. Wandering from cottage to cottage we knocked at the doors and windows, hoping to rouse the slumbering people; but sleep sits more willingly on the peasant's hard pillow than it will pace, without fretting, the softly-garnished chamber of indolent wealth, and not long for morning to fly away. At last we succeeded completely by not only awakening the family of one cottage, but our vociferations alarmed nearly half the village population. I do not recollect the name of the village, but the inhabitants bore the disturbance with great good nature; and thrusting their heads out of their bed-room windows, that looked no bigger than port-holes, two or three men directed us to the abode of a fisherman who would soon put us in the way of hiring a pram. Finding the fisherman's hut, we soon thumped him out of his dreams, and, shouting uproariously from within, he desired to know who we were, and what we desired. The Norwegian, our guide, entered into a lengthened dialogue through the door, and assured the fisherman of our good faith and bad plight, begging that he would rise, and help us with the means of returning to Auron.
Half an hour afterwards we were reclining on some branches of the fir with which the four boatmen, whose services the fisherman had secured, covered the seats and bottom of the pram, having learned from our guide the distance we had travelled; and, spreading their coats over us, bade us rest. To soothe us to slumber, they sang, in union with the motion of their oars, a native boat-song, and its sweet and plaintive air, though it could not entice us to sleep soundly, pacified the wearied nerves, and we lay in a Paradise of dreaming sensibility. These four men were each six feet in stature, and their philanthropy and good nature were as broad as their frames. They ceased not rowing for one moment, throughout the entire distance, to rest on their oars; and though the rain, from two o'clock till four, fell in torrents, their spirits chafed not with its pelting violence; but they sang, and laughed, and jested with each other as if the sun was shining cheerfully over their heads. We stepped on board the cutter at four o'clock, having been rowed eighteen miles in three hours and a half.
For all the countries which I have traversed Nature appears not to have done so much to make them agreeable to man, as she has for Norway, and man so little to make his own soil suitable for himself as the Norwegian; nor have I, in either hemisphere, felt more truly spiritualized by the grandeur of the scenery, the honest frankness and simplicity of its people, as here. I have wandered over many parts of the earth; I have looked upon its lofty mountains shrouded in clouds, or capped with snow; I have, loitering in its smiling valleys, seen its waterfalls, and floated on its crystal torpid lakes, and rushing rivers; yet this old land of Norway yields not in all to them, but bears on her stern and rugged brow the soft impressions of a beneficent creation impartially dispensed. Such reflections failed not, day by day, to force themselves upon me; for I knew, that every step I now took removed me farther and farther from a country, whose mighty mountains had, with their solemnity, first taught me to think; and the integrity and single-mindedness of whose children showed how, though fostered in the flinty lap of poverty, happiness and heroic contentment were no fable. The peasants, whom we sometimes met in the interior of the country, where their livelihood must be earned with the hardest labour, and whose necessity during the long and dismal months of winter must not be much inferior to absolute want, ever seemed cheerful and ready, not only to share their scanty fare with us, but to give us milk and butter, and dried fish, or other dainties which they may have hoarded for the coming time of cold and darkness. Black bread of barley, or of rye, sour and unfit even for "Sailor," formed their daily diet, and meat had never been tasted by thousands; nor did we obtain any other animal food, except at Christiania and Bergen, and there but with difficulty, than what we had brought from England; yet, under all their privations, the contented and happy disposition of these people, added to their independent bearing and dauntless bravery, was a lesson as instructive to luxurious selfishness, as it must be gratifying to the man who believes in the innate nobility of his race, and is proud of it.
Our guide was determined that we should not quit the Sogne Fiord without some token by which we might remember it; and sending a messenger to the other side of the Fiord, desired that a certain number of his tenants or friends should go to the Reenfjeld, and bring as many rein-deer as they could secure to the foot of a mountain, which he specified by name, on the morrow. Early in the morning, therefore, the first man who might have been seen on the deck of the cutter, was our Norwegian guide; and helping to heave the anchor, he pointed our course to the spot where the rein-deer would be brought. About one o'clock in the afternoon, we lay-to off a small village consisting of a few cottages, reposing at the base of the mountain which the Norwegian had indicated as our destination. Here, as it had been everywhere else, the scene was sublime; stamped against the blue sky, glaciers were above our heads, and green fields at our feet; and thousands of cascades leaping down the barren sides of the mountains which surrounded us north, east, and west, were not concealed from the eye by tree or shrub; but could be traced, inch by inch, from the flat summit of the mountains to the valleys that sloped to the water on which the vessel swam.
A girl with a basket of cherries came off to the yacht in a boat rowed by an old man, who watched her with solicitude and the most devoted affection; and when arriving alongside, the young lady was requested to come on board, and she complied readily with our entreaty, the despair that shaded the countenance of the old man delineated the torture of his heart. This peculiar appearance of the patriarchal face was not lost upon R——, who was as observant, as he is full of fun, and turning to me, he said, "Let's take her for a sail, and leave the old bird behind."
"Very well," I answered; "shall I tell D——?"