A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden Part 30

"Is it?" said R----; "well, then, let's shoot him as a nuisance."

"Nej, nej," exclaimed the Norwegian, with much trepidation, laying hold of R----'s fowling-piece, that he had jokingly raised to his shoulder preparatory to its discharge.

The animal, whatever it was, still continued trotting towards us, winding its way by the circuitous track of the forest. P---- kneeled down to have a more exact range both for his gun and sight; but springing to his feet almost instantly, he exclaimed,----

"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 s.e.x 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 a.s.sured 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 b.u.t.ter, and dried fish, or other dainties which they may have h.o.a.rded 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 n.o.bility 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----?"

The old man not being aware of the trick we were about to play, had not thought it necessary to make his pram fast to the cutter, but held on by the starboard main-channel. The order was given to put the helm over, and let the foresail draw. The cutter soon began to gather way, and before the old man could imagine why, or whence the increase of traction came, the main-chain slipped through his fingers, and he fell quietly but backwards in his pram. I am sorry to say our fair prisoner laughed as heartily as any one else at the comical att.i.tude of the old man.

Unlike the generality of people who have attained his years, the old man still possessed much presence of mind; and the instant he could recover his equilibrium, he sat down and set to work vigorously with his oars.

We kept shouting to him in bad Norwegian, to "pull away;" and running the cutter close up in the wind, allowed him to overtake us, and then taking hold of a coil of rope, the sailors bade him to "stand by for the end," but always took care when they did throw it, to make it fall short of him. This went on for some time; so that by degrees we had enticed the old man some two miles from the land, but discovering that we were only cajoling him, he turned the bow of his pram towards the sh.o.r.e, and with a long face of misery rowed back. The young lady, in the mean time, had wheedled herself into the affections of the amorous tars, particularly of King, he being a linguist. Having sold her basket of cherries she then seated herself on the deck, near the quarter bulwarks, enjoying the excursion and novelty of her situation, and laughing merrily at the discomfiture of her old swain. We had now stood across the Fiord, and sailed within half a mile of another village of some importance, for a large church with a red wooden steeple soared above the houses, out of the windows of which a mult.i.tude of heads were thrust and turned towards the cutter.

"The girl, my Lord," said D---- coming up to R----, "wishes to go ash.o.r.e here--she lives here, my Lord."

"Man the gig," answered R----, smiling, "and send her off in it."

"Very good, my Lord;" and away went D---- to give the order. The cutter lay to, and the gig was hauled up from the stern to the gangway. Four men sprung into her, and the c.o.c.kswain took his seat aft; and received, beside the cus.h.i.+ons for the seat and back-board, the empty basket of the Norwegian girl. The girl looked with much attention to all that was going forward; but could not tell why her basket was handed into the boat; and being informed that the gig was waiting to take her home, she did not dislike the honour about to be shewn her; but smiled and t.i.ttered with the instinctive gratification of her s.e.x.

"Tak," she said, mindful of her manners, shaking R----, P----, and me, by the hand, "tak, tak;" and gathering her petticoats tight about her legs, yet without any semblance of prudery, walked to the gangway, and, without aid, jumped into the boat. Seating herself on the scarlet cus.h.i.+ons, the c.o.c.kswain receiving permission from her to go on, with all the gravity due to a queen gave the word to his men, and away the gig shot, the girl kissing her hand all the time affectionately, and with no lack of elegance in the bowing inclination of her body in answer to our acts of reciprocal adoration. I need scarcely say, that the girl had never touched her native sh.o.r.es with an appearance more imposing, nor enjoyed herself so largely in so short a time; nor was her return to the village strand on any previous occasion, whether baptismal, or hymeneal, more numerously attended than on that day; for men, women, naked children, and snarling dogs came to the water's side to greet her, without any reference to numerical force, or moral weakness.

At three o'clock, with the a.s.sistance of our gla.s.ses, we discovered sixteen Norwegians, and their invariable companions, as many dogs, leading and tormenting four rein-deer down the mountains; and for two hours, along the narrow road of descent, we watched the whole troop enlarging from the indistinctness of black-beetles to the symmetry and size of men and animals. When they had reached the plain on which the small village was built, they shouted and beckoned to us; and although we made all possible haste, they seemed to fancy their excited feelings sluggish, nor allowed us sufficient time to walk from one side of the deck to the gangway without renewing their whoop.

When we landed, the first object that drew our attention from everything else, was a buck, whose height and proportions quite astonished us. This animal measured from the tail to the nose five feet two inches, and from the hoof of the fore leg to the top of his horns, when he held his head up, seven feet three inches, and his body was quite as large as that of an a.s.s. Although very much injured by the violence with which he had been used during his long journey from the mountains, and which had been rendered absolutely necessary by his ferocity and wildness, we were desirous of bringing him alive to England; but being so mutilated, our guide recommended us to have the buck slaughtered, and take a doe and her fawn on board. With great reluctance the death of the buck was agreed to by R----, and this splendid animal was dragged to a field close at hand. The strength and turbulence of the buck are beyond description; but I do not think I ever enjoyed any fiendish sight more than this short struggle between him and his murderers over twenty yards of ground. None but men, like the Norwegians, accustomed to these savage animals, could have controlled the deer in any way; but notwithstanding all their caution, I saw the buck kick one man on the chest, and throw him, exactly like a nine-pin, over and over, some few feet along the beach. The manner by which the Norwegians had secured this powerful animal was so ingenious, that he could, by no means, do much mischief, except to those persons who, bolder than the rest, went near to caress him; for three ropes were bound round the root of the horns, and being five or six feet in length, were held by three men who stood in the form of an angle, the head of the deer forming the base; or, in other words, one man stood on the left side of the buck, in a line with his left shoulder; a second man stood on the right side opposite to the right shoulder, while the third man took his station in front; and the three men were careful that the rope in the custody of each of them should be kept tight, since the peril of its being slack must be as obvious as its contrariety of tension; for whenever the animal made a plunge, as he sometimes did, towards the man on his right side, the Norwegian on the left could immediately check the career of the maddened deer by "holding on his end," as sailors say; the man in front at the same time giving his protection, and being protected in his turn.

The facility with which this buck was led seemed surprising; for the animal had not only his natural ferocity to offer against the skill of his antagonists, but he possessed strength and all the madness born of the human sounds to which he had been unaccustomed,--the loud ribaldry, and laughter of men and women, the whistle, and shrill cries of boys and frighted infants. Submitting to my ignorance, I must say that I had never seen any large animal killed, and did not know how the operation was performed; and with a feeling of the most horrible infatuation I gathered in the small group round the animal to learn the stratagems observed to surround his legs with looped ropes which, being drawn quickly, slipped into knots and tripped him up. When the proud deer fell to the ground, a man drawing a knife from his pocket, and unclasping it, thrust the blade up to the hilt into the skull between the horns. I could not have conceived anything deprived of life so suddenly; and were it not for the blood that flowed in warm and copious streams from the mouth and nostrils, the animal appeared to have been dead a week.

Another buck was killed, and made a present by R---- to his crew. The doe and the fawn were with great difficulty put on board; and so much time was expended in the construction of a pen for them, that we did not sail until ten o'clock in the evening. The doe received a few bruises in hoisting her over the side of the vessel, and one of the sprouting horns of the fawn was broken, which we endeavoured by splints to restore; but inflammation appeared to succeed so rapidly, that P----, who was princ.i.p.al chirurgeon, was obliged to amputate it with his razor close to the head of the animal. This beautiful little creature is still alive, and may be seen in the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park, to which Society both animals were presented by R---- on their safe arrival in England.

Every available corner of the yacht was filled with moss, for the Norwegians told us we should find some difficulty in urging the doe to eat any other food; but the fawn might be accustomed to corn or oats.

What the Norwegians then said was certified afterwards; for when within sight of the English coast, the moss had all been consumed, and the deer pined for its loss, eating nothing else in its lieu but bread and biscuit; but the fawn demolished the leaf of the filbert, corn, and hay, which had been collected in large quant.i.ties the last hour before we left Bergen.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SICK SAILOR--THE STORM--THE LEE-Sh.o.r.e--"BREAKERS A-HEAD"--THE YACHT IN DISTRESS--WEATHERING THE STORM --RETURN TO BERGEN--THE PHYSICIAN--THE WHIRLPOOL--THE WATER-SPOUT--HOMEWARD BOUND--SCARBOROUGH--YARMOUTH ROADS--ERITH--GREENWICH HOSPITAL--CONCLUSION.

Whatever might have been my refinement of feeling, I was not deterred from eating venison for a week afterwards, day by day, and a.s.senting to its delicious flavour, which, for the satisfaction of the son of Epicurus who may read these lines, I would state, tasted very strongly of the moss on which the animal had fed, and comprehended every charming idea he can form of the term "gamey."

All was hilarity on board; and though the evening wind in pa.s.sing only kissed gently the lazy canva.s.s, nothing occurred to mar the serenity of every face and heart until the afternoon of the day following that on which we sailed from the village. The sailors had been partaking of venison as well as ourselves; but there were not those sounds of joviality incidental to festive occasions, and the silence in the forecastle attracted our notice. "Talk of the Devil," my ancient countrywomen say, "and you will be sure to see him;" but though we had not spoken of his majesty, we certainly alluded to the crew; and whether D----, their representative, bears any affinity to that mighty potentate, I have never heard; yet certain it is, the said D----, with a countenance of ill omen, came into the cabin, and regretting that he should disturb us at such a time, observed,

"I am afraid, my Lord, King is very bad. He eats nothing, and complains a good deal."

"Of what does he complain?" asked R----.

"Of a dull pain in his stomach, my Lord," replied D----, "and a continual desire to retch."

"Oh! it's only a little attack of bile," observed R----; "I will soon put him to rights."

Rising from his chair, he went to seek his small medicine-chest with which returning, he placed it on the dinner-table. A few grains of calomel were weighed; and due directions being given when the physic should be taken, R---- prepared a black dose for the morrow, and committed that also to the custody of D----.

"I tell you what it is," said R----, after he had resumed his seat, "those cherries were too sour, and King, in making love to that girl, eat nearly the basket-ful; but if men will be fools, they must stand the brunt of their folly."

"Very true, my Lord," a.s.sented D----; "but I think King more ill than he looks, or says that he is; for he is fond of a drop, my Lord, like most of us, and that predilection tells when it comes."

"With this still weather," observed R----, "I suppose we cannot hope to reach Bergen for the next week."

"There is a slight tide, my Lord, the pilot says sets out the Fiord,"

D---- made reply; "and if so, the cutter would hardly take so long to drift the distance."

"It is nearly one hundred miles?" said R----, interrogatively.

"Nearly, my Lord," answered D----; "but I think the wind is edging round to the west. Let us see, my Lord;" and D---- turned round, and began to examine the barometer hanging up behind him, as well as a symparometer.

"It is very odd, my Lord," he continued, after a pause, "but the barometer is very low, and this symparometer as high as it can well be."

We rose to look at the gla.s.ses, and found them as D---- had stated; but it was not the first time we had observed this variation between the barometer and symparometer.

"That barometer must be out of order," said R----.

"I never saw this before, my Lord," answered D----, "and it would be difficult to say which is right, or which is wrong; but you may depend, my Lord, something is brewing."

We tapped the barometer, and coaxed the symparometer; but all to no purpose, and they both doggedly retained their relative indications one to the other. D---- had hitherto been guided entirely by the symparometer, for it was a very delicate and beautiful instrument, and never failed in foretelling a shower of rain, or squall of wind. It is remarkable, that when we got to the north of 60 degrees, the symparometer acted directly opposite to that plan for which it was intended; and instead of the declension of the oil being indicative of bad weather, and its ascension prognostic of fair weather, a direct contradiction to the movement of the barometer was the result. Let those who understand the matter account for the fact. The coldness of the climate could have had no influence, for the temperature differed not from that of England; and when we were cruising in the lat.i.tude of the Naze, this symparometer was most sensitive and correct in its action.

Perplexed by the position of the two gla.s.ses we went on deck, and cast our eyes to the clear blue firmament, and rested them, ungratified, on the sharply-marked summits of the mountains. It was now about half-past ten o'clock, the evening being unusually calm, and its breath sweet with the smell of flowers, and aroma of the juniper and fir. The sky was without a stain, except in the west, and there clouds of a dark crimson tinge cl.u.s.tered, motionlessly, about twenty degrees above the horizon, and extending from the S.W. to the N.W., looked like a narrow zone of red-hot iron; but their splendid colour was lessened by being seen through blacker vapours, that thrown, as a veil of c.r.a.pe, over them, intercepted our vision.

As the cutter drifted close in to the sh.o.r.e, a great number of filbert trees were pointed out to us by our pilot; and since the fawn had shown, the day before, such partiality for the leaves, I rowed the jolly-boat to land, and commenced plucking as much as the boat would carry. Busy with my task, I paid no attention to the yacht; but still took it for granted, that she lay becalmed. A gun fired; and looking up, I saw the cutter on a port tack, standing across the Fiord; and I knew enough about sailing to understand, that if I did not make haste, I should be unable to overtake her when she reached over, on the other tack, to me.

Stowing as many branches of the filbert at the bottom of the boat as it would hold, I pulled to the yacht; but before I got alongside, the wind that had freshened, lulled again calmly as ever. The clouds, nevertheless, to which I have drawn attention, began almost imperceptibly to move, and the darker ones, breaking into small ma.s.ses as they floated towards the zenith, dilated and a.s.sumed all kinds of shapes.