CHAPTER I.PREPARATIONS.
“In every cornerCarefully look thouEre forth thou goest.”Hávamál.
“In every cornerCarefully look thouEre forth thou goest.”Hávamál.
“In every cornerCarefully look thouEre forth thou goest.”
“In every corner
Carefully look thou
Ere forth thou goest.”
Hávamál.
Hávamál.
There is no saying more true than that “he who would make a tour abroad, must first make the tour of London.” There are miscellaneous articles of appropriate clothing to be got together; there are bags, knapsacks, portmanteaus, to be fitted. Above all, there are passports to be procured; than which no plague more vexatious, more annoying, or more utterly useless for any practicable or comprehensible purpose, has been devised by modern ingenuity.
But if this is a necessary preliminary on ordinary occasions, much more is it necessary when the contemplated expedition has for its object sporting, and the northern wildernesses for its contemplated locality. In addition to the cares of ordinary travel, there are now tents, blankets, cloaks, guns, rifles, to be thought of; rods, reels, gaffs, lines, to be overhauled and repaired; material-books to be replenished, and the commissariat department to be adequately looked to. Deep and anxious, yet not without their pleasures, are the responsibilities which rest on the shoulders of him who undertakes the conduct of such an expedition as this.
Such were the thoughts that crossed the mind of the Parson, as—business in his musing eye, care on his frowning brow, and determination in his compressed lip—he stood under the archway of the Golden Cross; his hands mechanically feeling for the pockets of his fishing-jacket, which had been exchanged for a clerical frock-coat more befitting the locality, and his mouth pursing itself up for his habitualwhistle, which, had he indulged in it where he then stood, might have been considered neither appropriate nor decorous.
“Don’t you think this list rather a long one,” said the Captain, who had now joined him from the interior of the hotel, holding in his hand a pretty closely-written sheet of foolscap. “These are all very good things, and very useful things no doubt, but how are we to stow them, and how are we to carry them? Yours is anything but light marching order.”
“Why should it be?”
“My principle is, that no traveller can be too lightly equipped.”
“And a very good principle, too,” said the Parson. “Heavy and useless incumbrances are the invariable attributes of travelling Englishmen. You may know them by their endless train of household goods, as you would know a snail by its shell.”
“I believe,” said the Captain, “that foreign rail-roads are regulated precisely so as to tax us English tourists. Travel on whatever line you please in England, except that grasping Brighton and South Coast, and you may take just exactly what luggage you like; while abroad, the fare is so low and the charge for luggage so high, that an Englishman generally pays double; while the Frenchman, whose three spare collars and bottle of hair-oil are in his pocket; and the German, whose great tobacco-bag and little reticule of necessaries are so constructed as to fit the allowance, are permitted to go free.”
“Upon my word, I do not object to the tax; it is a tax upon folly. What can be so absurd as such a miscellaneous collection as Englishmen generally carry with them? What can a traveller want beyond a dry suit of clothes and half-a-dozen shirts and stockings?”
“There is a slight incongruity between your words and your actions,” said the Captain, holding up the list.
“Tush! put that paper into your pocket, and tell me what we are going to do. When I went on my reconnoitring expedition to Norway last year, my fourteen-footrod, my fly-book, and a change of clothes constituted all the cares of my life; and I contend, as you do, that no traveller whose object is information has any business with more. But we are going now more in the character of settlers: we are not going to explore, but to enjoy that which has been explored for us. Why should we not, therefore, take whatever may make life enjoyable?”
“Only for fear we may be called upon to choose between leaving them behind or leaving our purpose unaccomplished,” said the Captain.
“Do you think I have calculated my ambulances so badly? But come along. We must consult Fortnum and Mason first. I can explain all that on our road.
“Considering how wild and uninhabited the greater part of the country is, both in Norway and Sweden,” the Parson resumed, as they crossed the pavement under Nelson’s pillar, “it is astonishing how easily you may travel, and how little impediment are yourimpedimenta. The posting regulations are admirable. On every road there are posting stations at convenient distances, and, by writing to these, the traveller may command, at stated prices, every horse and cart in the district.”
“And at moderate prices?” said the Captain, whose means were not so abundant as to make him indifferent to expense.
“No, not at moderate prices; for I do not call a penny an English mile a moderate price, and this is what you pay in Sweden; and in Norway it is not more than three-halfpence, except in favoured spots in the vicinity of towns, where they are permitted to charge three-fold. My plans, therefore, are these. We are not going to travel, but to visit certain fishing stations, most of which are at no great distance from the coast; let us take, therefore, everything that will make us comfortable at these different settlements. As long as we coast, we have always traders of some sort or other, and generally as nice and comfortable little steamers as you can desire. When our road lies along the fjords or lakes, boats are to be had from the post stations on the same terms as you get the carts, a rower reckoningthe same as a horse; and when we want to take to the land, we have but to order as many carts as will hold our traps.”
“And how do we travel ourselves?” said the Captain.
“There is no carriage in the world so pleasant for fine weather as the cariole; and I propose that we each buy one. If we have to get them new, they do not cost above thirty specie-dalers—that is to say, about seven or eight pounds—with all their harness and fittings, in the very first style; and you may always sell them again at the end of your journey. That is the way the natives manage, and they are terrible gadabouts. You always find some jobber or other to take it off your hands. But the chances are that we shall meet with a choice of second-hand carioles to begin with. I gave twenty specie-dalers for mine last year, and sold it for fifteen. Drammen is the place for these things, up in Christiania fjord: it is the Long Acre of Norway.”
“What sort of things are these carioles?—Gigs, I suppose, to carry two.”
“Not they—barely one: and no great room for baggage either. A Scandinavian is of your way of thinking, and does not trouble himself with spare shirts. One horse draws one man, and that is all. If your gig carries two, you are charged a horse and a half for it. In Sweden they have a sort of light spring waggon, drawn by three horses, which will take our followers admirably, with as much luggage as we like to stow; and by having the collars of the harness made open at the top, they will do for all the variety of horses we may meet with on our road. This is better than the Norwegian mode of engaging the farm carts; for in this, so much time is lost at every stage in restowing luggage, that it becomes a serious hindrance. However, in Norway we must do as the Norwegians do. The light waggon would make a very unpleasant conveyance down some of their mountain roads.”
“And how do you manage crossing the fjords and lakes?”
“Easily enough. Every ferry-boat will take a cariole; and as for coasting, a cariole ranks as a deck passenger—that is to say, about ten skillings for a sea mile, you paying for your own passage in the cabin about twenty.”
“You travellers get so confoundedly technical. What the deuce do you mean by a sea mile and a skilling? And how am I to compare two things neither of which I know anything about?”
“A regular traveller’s fault,” said the Parson. “There is not a book written that does not abound with these absurdities. Well, a skilling is a halfpenny in our money, and a sea mile is four of our miles, and a land mile eight, nearly.”
“Pretty liberal in their measures of length,” said the Captain.
“Why, they have plenty of it, and to spare; as you will find when you come to travel from one place to another. But their money is not plentiful, and they dole it out in very small denominations indeed.”
“But here we are at Fortnum and Mason’s; and now for the stores.”
“I observe, you always go to the most expensive places,” said the Captain.
“That is because I cannot afford to go to the cheaper ones,” said the Parson. “On such an expedition as this, you should never take inferior stores. One hamper turning out bad when unpacked at the end of a thousand miles or so of carriage, will make more than the difference between the cheapest and the most expensive shop in London. But, to show you that I do study economy, I will resist the temptation of these preserved meats; and, let me tell you, it is a temptation, for up the country you will get nothing but what you catch, gather, or shoot. This, however, is a necessary,” pointing to some skins of portable soup; “there is not a handier thing for a traveller; it goes in the smallest compass of any sort of provisions; it is always useful on a pinch, and some chips of it carried in the waistcoat pocket on a pedestrian expedition, make a dinner, not exactly luxurious, but quite sufficient to do work upon. This we must lay in a good store of; in fact, if we have this, we need not be very anxious about anything else. Other things are luxuries: this is a necessary of life. Tea we must take: there is nothing more refreshing after a hard day’s work, and you cannot get it anywhere in the country. At least, what youdo meet with is altogethermaris expers, being a villanous composition of dried strawberry leaves and other home productions. Oil, too—we must take plenty of that; we shall want it for the frying-pan.”
“Have they no butter, then?” said the Captain.
“Yes, they have, and in great plenty too; of all varieties of quality, from very bad, down to indescribably beastly. They call it smör, pronouncing the dottedolike the Frencheu; and I can assure you their very best butter tastes just as the word sounds.”
“Well, then, I vote for some of these sardines, to take off the taste.”
“With all my heart,” said the Parson; “they flavour anything, when they are not made of salted bleak, as they generally are—so does cayenne pepper. We may as well have some cocoa paste, and a Bologna sausage or two may prove a useful luxury.”
“What do you say to a cask of biscuits?” said the Captain. “What sort of bread have they?”
“Do you recollect that old story told of Charles the Twelfth, when he said of the bread brought to him, that it was not good, but that it might be eaten? No one can tell the heroism of that speech who has not eaten the Swedish black bread, which is generally the only representative of the staff of life procurable. It is gritty, it is heavy, it is puddingy; if you throw it against a wall it will stick there—and as for sourness, O, ye gods! they purposely keep the leaven till it is uneatably sour, and then fancy it becomes wholesome.”
“Well, I suppose it does,” said the Captain. “The Squire used to say, that everything that was good, is unwholesome or wrong; and I suppose the converse is true. But why not take the biscuits?”
“Because we can get that which will answer our purpose perfectly when we arrive at the country, and that without the carriage, and at a much cheaper rate. There is not a seaport town in all the coast where you may not get what they call Kahyt Scorpor, a sort of coarse imitation of what nurses in England feed babies upon, under the name of topsand bottoms. They are made of rye, and are as black as my hat; but they are very good eating, keep for ever, and are cheap enough in all conscience, being from four to six skillings to the pound, that is to say, threepence. In Norway they call them Rö Kovringer.”
“We will take some rice, which very often comes in well by way of vegetables in a kettle of grouse soup; and a good quantity of chocolate, which packs easily, and furnishes a breakfast on the shortest possible notice. And this, I think, will do very well for the commissariat department of our expedition.”
“And now for arms and ammunition,” said the Captain.
“Everything we are likely to want in that department, we must take with us—guns, of course. Shot certainly may be got at Christiansand, and the other large towns; up the country, though, you will get neither that nor anything else: but powder can be got nowhere, at least, powder that does not give you an infinity of trouble in cleaning your gun, on account of the quantity of deposit it leaves. That little magazine of yours, with its block-tin canisters and brass screw-stoppers, will hold enough for us two, unless we meet with very good sport indeed, and in that case we must put up with the manufacture of the country.”
“And for guns?” said the Captain. “I shall certainly take that little pea-rifle I brought from Canada. I want to bring down a bear.”
“We shall be more likely to get a crack at a seal, where we are going,” said the Parson. “Bears are not so plentiful in Norway as is generally supposed. People imagine that they run about in flocks like sheep; however, it is possible that there may be a bear-hunt while we are there. As for rifles, I own I am partial to our own English manufacture. Those little pea affairs are sensible things enough in their own country, where one wanders for weeks on end through interminable forests and desolate prairies on foot, and where a pound of lead more or less in your knapsack is a matter of consequence: but where we have means of transport, I see no great sense in them. A pea, no doubt, will kill, if it hits in the right place; but, like the old Duke, I have myselfrather a partiality for the weighty bullet. However, each man to his fancy. The great merit of every gun, rifle, or pistol, lies behind the stock,—a truth that dandy sportsmen are apt to forget; a pea sent straight is better than a two-ounce ball beside the mark.”
“Well,” said the Captain, laughing, “I think I can hold my little Yankee pretty straight; but we shall want shot-guns more than rifles. I may as well take that case I had from Westley Richards, if you do not think it too heavy.”
“Not at all; you can always leave the case behind, and take one gun in a waterproof cover when we go on light-armed expeditions. This will furnish us with a spare gun in case of accidents. I shall take my own old one, and a duck gun—which last will be common property, and I think with this we shall be pretty sufficiently armed. Pointers and setters are of no great use, unless it is a steady old stager, who will retrieve; for you must recollect there is no heath, and very little field shooting. The character of the country is cover, not very thick anywhere, and in many places interspersed with glades and openings. We shall do better with beaters: a water-dog, however, is indispensable. Lakes and rivers abound, and so do ducks, teal, and snipes.”
“Have you thought about tents?” said the Captain.
“Well,” said the Parson, “I am not sure that tents are indispensable, and they certainly are not a little cumbersome. While we are fishing we can do very well without them: by the water-side we can never be without a cottage of some sort to put our heads under if it should come on bad weather, for every house in the whole country stands on the banks of some lake or river. I must say, though, when you get up into the fjeld after the grouse and the ducks, or, it may be, bigger game, it is another affair altogether. You may then go twenty or thirty miles on end without seeing a human habitation, unless you are lucky enough to meet with a säter, and you know what a highland bothy is, for dirt and vermin. But, even in the fjeld, I do not know that we should want tents; you can have no idea of the beauty of a northern summer’s night, and the very little need one has of any cover whatever. I remember, last year, standing on one of theirbarrows, smoking my pipe at the foot of an old stone cross, coeval, probably, with St. Olaf, and shadowing the tomb of some of his followers that Hakon the Jarl thinned off so savagely. It was deep midnight, and there was not a chill in the air, or dew enough on the whole headland to fill the cup of a Lys Alf. The full round moon was shining down upon me from the south, while a strong glowing twilight was still lighting up the whole northern sky, where the sun was but just hid under the horizon. The whole scene was as light as day, with the deep solemn stillness of midnight all the while. I could distinctly make out the distant fishing-boats; I could almost distinguish what the men were doing in them, through the bright and transparent atmosphere; but at the same time all was so still that I could hear the whistle of the wings, as flight after flight of wild-fowl shot over me in their course to seaward, though they were so high in the air that I could not distinguish the individual birds, only the faint outline of the wedge-like figure in which they were flying. I remember, that night, thinking how perfectly unnecessary a tent was, and determining not to bring one; and, that night at all events, I acted up to my conviction; for, when my pipe was out, I slept at the foot of the old cross till the sun warned me that the salmon were stirring.”
“All very pleasant, no doubt,” said the Captain; “very enjoyable indeed: but does it never rain at night in this favoured land of yours?”
“Upon my word, it does not very often,” said the Parson; “at least, not in the summer-time. Besides, you cannot conceive how well the men tent themselves with pine-branches.”
“I do not quite like the idea,” said the Captain. “It is all very well to sleep out when anything is to be got by it; but, when there is nothing to be got by it but the rheumatism, to tell you the honest truth—unlucky, as the old women say it is—I rather prefer contemplating the moon through glass.”
“Well, I will tell you what we can do,” said the Parson, “and that will be a compromise. We can get some canvas made up into two lug sails. These will help us uncommonlyin our passage over lakes and fjords, for their boats are seldom well provided in that respect; and when we get to our destination, lug sails—being square, or, to speak more accurately, parallelogrammatical—will make us very capital gipsy tents, with two pairs of cross-sticks and a ridge-pole, which we shall always be able to cut from the forest. I think we may indulge ourselves so far. As for waterproof jackets, trousers, boots, and so forth, I need not tell you about that: you have been out before, and know the value of these when you want to fish through a rainy day. We shall not have so dripping a climate here as we had in Ireland, certainly, but we shall have one use for our waterproof clothing which we had not there, and that is, when we bivouac, vulcanised India-rubber is as good a defence against the dew and the ground-damp as it is against the rain. A case of knife, fork, and spoon apiece is absolutely necessary, for they do not grow in the fjeld. A light axe or two, and a couple of hand-bills, a hammer and nails, which are just as likely to be wanted to repair our land-carriages as our boats. If you are at all particular in shaving—which, by-the-by, is not at all necessary—you may as well take a portable looking-glass. You will not find it so easy to shave in the reflection of a clear pool—a strait to which I was reduced when I was there last year. And now, I think, we have everything—that is to say, if you have taken care of the fishing-tackle, as you engaged to do.”
“I have not taken care of your material-book.”
“No,” said the Parson; “but I have taken very good care of that myself. Fly-making may be a resource to fall back upon, if we meet with rainy weather, and my book is well replenished.”
“Everything else,—rods, books, reels, gaffs, and so forth,—I have packed in the old black box which we had with us at Belleek, with spare line, and water-cord, and armed wire, and eel hooks, and, in fact, everything that we can possibly want; and a pretty heavy package it makes, I can assure you.”
“Well,” said the Parson, “we may go to sleep now with a clear conscience. But so much depends upon a good start, that a little extra trouble, on the first day, will be found to save, in the end, a multiplicity of inconveniences.”