CHAPTER IV. NORWAY. "Homeless, ragged, and tanned, under the changeful sky; Who so free in the land, who so contented as I!" The Vagabond. N the same year, '72, after some delay at made), Trondhjem, Christianssund and Bergen, nominally for the purpose of seeing those towns, in reality more for the sake of being cheered by human faces after so long an absence from land, I struck out for the interior of this peninsula of Scandinavia, intending to cross over Norway on foot, from sea to sea; notwithstanding the lateness of the season, which made that range of mountains in the centre of the country very hazardous to pass, because the autumn snowwhich falls at the commencement of arctic winter about the middle of September-has had no time to harden, and lies drifted over all the passes on this backbone of the country very deep. Aalesond, it may be as well to add here, is a thriving sea-port and great rendezvous in summer time for all the Spanish vessels engaged in trade with Norway, but especially resorted to for lobsters, of which whole cargoes leave here in the season, ships laden for Spain with nothing else, while the Norwegian children in the streets talk Spanish as easily as any language of their own. On landing here, the very first thing said and commented upon within my hearing was a piece of news by telegraph, to say the king of Norway, Charles XV., was no more. His Majesty had only died the night before, and very suddenly. Leaving these places and their trade, together with all the usual observations on customs and manners in Norway, the opening scene of this perilous expedition will be laid upon the Sogni Fjord, where a little steamer had taken me from Bergen, the only passenger on board. She went up this narrow bay, or fjord, between tremendous precipices sheer down into the water on each side, for between 70 and 80 miles to where I landed a station called Fronningen. From that lonely and isolated country-house there lay some distance yet, by water, to the village of Urland, where this travelling on foot was to commence; had it only been later in the season, the intermediate part by water would have been performed upon the ice, either in a sledge or by skating all the way. As it happened, I had to wait an hour and a half before it was possible to get a boat or men to undertake it; but then began some scenery of real magnificence, which lasted the whole time I continued in this open boat-four hours during which time we made no less than 17 or 18 miles. The language spoken by these boatmen was entirely a patois, difficult to under L |