INCIDENTS OF CARRIOLE TRAVEL.

It is rather singular that whenever you are about to start upon a new journey, you almost always fall in with some one who has just made it, and who overwhelms you with all sorts of warning and advice.  This has happened to me so frequently that I have long ago ceased to regard any such communications, unless the individual from whom they come inspires me with more than usual confidence.  While inspecting our carrioles at the hotel in Christiania, I was accosted by a Hamburg merchant, who had just arrived from Drontheim, by way of the Dovre Fjeld and the Miosen Lake.  “Ah,” said he, “those things won’t last long.  That oil-cloth covering for your luggage will be torn to pieces in a few days by the postillions climbing upon it.  Then they hold on to your seat and rip the cloth lining with their long nails; besides, the rope reins wear the leather off your dashboard, and you will be lucky if your wheels and axles don’t snap on the rough roads.”  Now, here was a man who had travelled much in Norway, spoke the language perfectly, and might be supposed to know something; but his face betrayed the croaker, and I knew, moreover, that of all fretfully luxurious men, merchants ­and especially North-German merchants ­are the worst, so I let him talk and kept my own private opinion unchanged.

At dinner he renewed the warnings.  “You will have great delay in getting horses at the stations.  The only way is to be rough and swaggering, and threaten the people ­and even that won’t always answer.”  Most likely, I thought. ­“Of course you have a supply of provisions with you?” he continued.  “No,” said I, “I always adopt the diet of the country in which I travel.” ­“But you can’t do it here!” he exclaimed in horror, “you can’t do it here!  They have no wine, nor no white bread, nor no fresh meat; and they don’t know how to cook anything!” “I am perfectly aware of that,” I answered; “but as long as I am not obliged to come down to bread made of fir-bark and barley-straw, as last winter in Lapland, I shall not complain.” ­“You possess the courage of a hero if you can do such a thing; but you will not start now, in this rain?” We answered by bidding him a polite adieu, for the post-horses had come, and our carrioles were at the door.  As if to reward our resolution, the rain, which had been falling heavily all the morning, ceased at that moment, and the grey blanket of heaven broke and rolled up into loose masses of cloud.

I mounted into the canoe-shaped seat, drew the leathern apron over my legs, and we set out, in single file, through the streets of Christiania.  The carriole, as I have already said, has usually no springs (ours had none at least), except those which it makes in bounding over the stones.  We had not gone a hundred yards before I was ready to cry out ­“Lord, have mercy upon me!” Such a shattering of the joints, such a vibration of the vertebrae, such a churning of the viscera, I had not felt since travelling by banghy-cart in India.  Breathing went on by fits and starts, between the jolts; my teeth struck together so that I put away my pipe, lest I should bite off the stem, and the pleasant sensation of having been pounded in every limb crept on apace.  Once off the paving-stones, it was a little better; beyond the hard turnpike which followed, better still; and on the gravel and sand of the first broad hill, we found the travel easy enough to allay our fears.  The two skydsbonder, or postillions, who accompanied us, sat upon our portmanteaus, and were continually jumping off to lighten the ascent of the hills.  The descents were achieved at full trotting speed, the horses leaning back, supporting themselves against the weight of the carrioles, and throwing out their feet very firmly, so as to avoid the danger of slipping.  Thus, no matter how steep the hill, they took it with perfect assurance and boldness, never making a stumble.  There was just sufficient risk left, however, to make these flying descents pleasant and exhilarating.

Our road led westward, over high hills and across deep valleys, down which we had occasional glimpses of the blue fjord and its rocky islands.  The grass and grain were a rich, dark green, sweeping into a velvety blue in the distance, and against this deep ground, the bright red of the houses showed with strong effect ­a contrast which was subdued and harmonised by the still darker masses of the evergreen forests, covering the mountain ranges.  At the end of twelve or thirteen miles we reached the first post-station, at the foot of the mountains which bound the inland prospect from Christiania on the west.  As it was not a “fast” station, we were subject to the possibility of waiting two or three hours for horses, but fortunately were accosted on the road by one of the farmers who supply the skyds, and changed at his house.  The Norwegian skyds differs from the Swedish skjuts in having horses ready only at the fast stations, which are comparatively few, while at all others you must wait from one to three hours, according to the distance from which the horses must be brought.  In Sweden there are always from two to four horses ready, and you are only obliged to wait after these are exhausted.  There, also, the regulations are better, and likewise more strictly enforced.  It is, at best, an awkward mode of travelling ­very pleasant, when everything goes rightly, but very annoying when otherwise.

We now commenced climbing the mountain by a series of terribly steep ascents, every opening in the woods disclosing a wider and grander view backward over the lovely Christiania Fjord and the intermediate valleys.  Beyond the crest we came upon a wild mountain plateau, a thousand feet above the sea, and entirely covered with forests of spruce and fir.  It was a black and dismal region, under the lowering sky:  not a house or a grain field to be seen, and thus we drove for more than two hours, to the solitary inn of Krogkleven, where we stopped for the night in order to visit the celebrated King’s View in the morning.  We got a tolerable supper and good beds, sent off a messenger to the station of Sundvolden, at the foot of the mountain, to order horses for us, and set out soon after sunrise, piloted by the landlord’s son, Olaf.  Half an hour’s walk through the forest brought us to a pile of rocks on the crest of the mountain, which fell away abruptly to the westward.  At our feet lay the Tyri Fjord, with its deeply indented shores and its irregular, scattered islands, shining blue and bright in the morning sun, while away beyond it stretched a great semicircle of rolling hills covered with green farms, dotted with red farm-houses, and here and there a white church glimmering like a spangle on the breast of the landscape.  Behind this soft, warm, beautiful region, rose dark, wooded hills, with lofty mountain-ridges above them, until, far and faint, under and among the clouds, streaks of snow betrayed some peaks of the Nore Fjeld, sixty or seventy miles distant.  This is one of the most famous views in Norway, and has been compared to that from the Righi, but without sufficient reason.  The sudden change, however, from the gloomy wilderness through which you first pass to the sunlit picture of the enchanting lake, and green, inhabited hills and valleys, may well excuse the raptures of travellers.  Ringerike, the realm of King Ring, is a lovely land, not only as seen from this eagle’s nest, but when you have descended upon its level.  I believe the monarch’s real name was Halfdan the Black.  So beloved was he in life that after death his body was divided into four portions, so that each province might possess some part of him.  Yet the noblest fame is transitory, and nobody now knows exactly where any one of his quarters was buried.

A terrible descent, through a chasm between perpendicular cliffs some hundreds of feet in height, leads from Krogkleven to the level of the Tyri Fjord.  There is no attempt here, nor indeed upon the most of the Norwegian roads we travelled, to mitigate, by well-arranged curves, the steepness of the hills.  Straight down you go, no matter of how breakneck a character the declivity may be.  There are no drags to the carrioles and country carts, and were not the native horses the toughest and surest-footed little animals in the world, this sort of travel would be trying to the nerves.

Our ride along the banks of the Tyri Fjord, in the clear morning sunshine, was charming.  The scenery was strikingly like that on the lake of Zug, in Switzerland, and we missed the only green turf, which this year’s rainless spring had left brown and withered.  In all Sweden we had seen no such landscapes, not even in Norrland.  There, however, the people carried off the palm.  We found no farm-houses here so stately and clean as the Swedish, no such symmetrical forms and frank, friendly faces.  The Norwegians are big enough, and strong enough, to be sure, but their carriage is awkward, and their faces not only plain but ugly.  The countrywomen we saw were remarkable in this latter respect, but nothing could exceed their development of waist, bosom and arms.  Here is the stuff of which Vikings were made, I thought, but there has been no refining or ennobling since those times.  These are the rough primitive formations of the human race ­the bare granite and gneiss, from which sprouts no luxuriant foliage, but at best a few simple and hardy flowers.  I found much less difficulty in communicating with the Norwegians than I anticipated.  The language is so similar to the Swedish that I used the latter, with a few alterations, and easily made myself understood.  The Norwegian dialect, I imagine, stands in about the same relation to pure Danish as the Scotch does to the English.  To my ear, it is less musical and sonorous than the Swedish, though it is often accented in the same peculiar sing-song way.

Leaving the Tyri Fjord, we entered a rolling, well-cultivated country, with some pleasant meadow scenery.  The crops did not appear to be thriving remarkably, probably on account of the dry weather.  The hay crop, which the farmers were just cutting, was very scanty; rye and winter barley were coming into head, but the ears were thin and light, while spring barley and oats were not more than six inches in height.  There were many fields of potatoes, however, which gave a better promise.  So far as one could judge from looking over the fields, Norwegian husbandry is yet in a very imperfect state, and I suspect that the resources of the soil are not half developed.  The whole country was radiant with flowers, and some fields were literally mosaics of blue, purple, pink, yellow, and crimson bloom.  Clumps of wild roses fringed the road, and the air was delicious with a thousand odours.  Nature was throbbing with the fullness of her short midsummer life, with that sudden and splendid rebound from the long trance of winter which she nowhere makes except in the extreme north.

At Klakken, which is called a lilsigelse station, where horses must be specially engaged, we were obliged to wait two hours and a half, while they were sent for from a distance of four miles.  The utter coolness and indifference of the people to our desire to get on faster was quite natural, and all the better for them, no doubt, but it was provoking to us.  We whiled away a part of the time with breakfast, which was composed mainly of boiled eggs and an immense dish of wild strawberries, of very small size but exquisitely fragrant flavour.  The next station brought us to Vasbunden, at the head of the beautiful Randsfjord, which was luckily a fast station, and the fresh horses were forthcoming in two minutes.  Our road all the afternoon lay along the eastern bank of the Fjord, coursing up and down the hills through a succession of the loveliest landscape pictures.  This part of Norway will bear a comparison with the softer parts of Switzerland, such as the lakes of Zurich and Thun.  The hilly shores of the Fjord were covered with scattered farms, the villages being merely churches with half a dozen houses clustered about them.

At sunset we left the lake and climbed a long wooded mountain to a height of more than two thousand feet.  It was a weary pull until we reached the summit, but we rolled swiftly down the other side to the inn of Teterud, our destination, which we reached about 10 P.M.  It was quite light enough to read, yet every one was in bed, and the place seemed deserted, until we remembered what latitude we were in.  Finally, the landlord appeared, followed by a girl, whom, on account of her size and blubber, Braisted compared to a cow-whale.  She had been turned out of her bed to make room for us, and we two instantly rolled into the warm hollow she had left, my Nilotic friend occupying a separate bed in another corner.  The guests’ room was an immense apartment; eight sets of quadrilles might have been danced in it at one time.  The walls were hung with extraordinary pictures of the Six Days of Creation, in which the Almighty was represented as an old man dressed in a long gown, with a peculiarly good-humoured leer, suggesting a wink, on his face.  I have frequently seen the same series of pictures in the Swedish inns.  In the morning I was aroused by Braisted exclaiming, “There she blows!” and the whale came up to the surface with a huge pot of coffee, some sugar candy, excellent cream, and musty biscuit.

It was raining when we started, and I put on a light coat, purchased in London, and recommended in the advertisement as being “light in texture, gentlemanly in appearance, and impervious to wet,” with strong doubts of its power to resist a Norwegian rain.  Fortunately, it was not put to a severe test; we had passing showers only, heavy, though short.  The country, between the Randsfjord and the Miosen Lake was open and rolling, everywhere under cultivation, and apparently rich and prosperous.  Our road was admirable, and we rolled along at the rate of one Norsk mile (seven miles) an hour, through a land in full blossom, and an atmosphere of vernal odours.  At the end of the second station we struck the main road from Christiania to Drontheim.  In the station-house I found translations of the works of Dickens and Captain Chamier on the table.  The landlord was the most polite and attentive Norwegian we had seen; but he made us pay for it, charging one and a half marks apiece for a breakfast of boiled eggs and cheese.

Starting again in a heavy shower, we crossed the crest of a hill, and saw all at once the splendid Miosen Lake spread out before us, the lofty Island of Helge, covered with farms and forests, lying in the centre of the picture.  Our road went northward along the side of the vast, sweeping slope of farm-land which bounds the lake on the west.  Its rough and muddy condition showed how little land-travel there is at present, since the establishment of a daily line of steamers on the lake.  At the station of Gjovik, a glass furnace, situated in a wooded little dell on the shore, I found a young Norwegian who spoke tolerable English, and who seemed astounded at our not taking the steamer in preference to our carrioles.  He hardly thought it possible that we could be going all the way to Lillehammer, at the head of the lake, by the land road.  When we set out, our postillion took a way leading up the hills in the rear of the place.  Knowing that our course was along the shore, we asked him if we were on the road to Sveen, the next station.  “Oh, yes; it’s all right,” said he, “this is a new road.”  It was, in truth, a superb highway; broad and perfectly macadamised, and leading along the brink of a deep rocky chasm, down which thundered a powerful stream.  From the top of this glen we struck inland, keeping more and more to the westward.  Again we asked the postillion, and again received the same answer.  Finally; when we had travelled six or seven miles, and the lake had wholly disappeared, I stopped and demanded where Sveen was.  “Sveen is not on this road,” he answered; “we are going to Mustad!” “But,” I exclaimed, “we are bound for Sveen and Lillehammer!” “Oh,” said he, with infuriating coolness, “you can go there afterwards!” You may judge that the carrioles were whirled around in a hurry, and that the only answer to the fellow’s remonstrances was a shaking by the neck which frightened him into silence.

We drove back to Gjovik in a drenching shower, which failed to cool our anger.  On reaching the station I at once made a complaint against the postillion, and the landlord called a man who spoke good English, to settle the matter.  The latter brought me a bill of $2 for going to Mustad and back.  Knowing that the horses belonged to farmers, who were not to blame in the least, we had agreed to pay for their use; but I remonstrated against paying the full price when we had not gone the whole distance, and had not intended to go at all.  “Why, then, did you order horses for Mustad?” he asked.  “I did no such thing!” I exclaimed, in amazement.  “You did!” he persisted, and an investigation ensued, which resulted in the discovery that the Norwegian who had advised us to go by steamer, had gratuitously taken upon himself to tell the landlord to send us to the Randsfjord, and had given the postillion similar directions!  The latter, imagining, perhaps, that we didn’t actually know our own plans, had followed his instructions.  I must say that I never before received such an astonishing mark of kindness.  The ill-concealed satisfaction of the people at our mishap made it all the more exasperating.  The end of it was that two or three marks were taken off the account, which we then paid, and in an hour afterwards shipped ourselves and carrioles on board a steamer for Lillehammer.  The Norwegian who had caused all this trouble came along just before we embarked, and heard the story with the most sublime indifference, proffering not a word of apology, regret, or explanation.  Judging from this specimen, the King of Sweden and Norway has good reason to style himself King of the Goths and Vandals.

I was glad, nevertheless, that we had an opportunity of seeing the Miosen, from the deck of a steamer.  Moving over the glassy pale-green water, midway between its shores, we had a far better exhibition of its beauties than from the land-road.  It is a superb piece of water, sixty miles in length by from two to five in breadth, with mountain shores of picturesque and ever-varying outline.  The lower slopes are farm land, dotted with the large gaards, or mansions of the farmers, many of which have a truly stately air; beyond them are forests of fir, spruce, and larch, while in the glens between, winding groves of birch, alder, and ash come down to fringe the banks of the lake.  Wandering gleams of sunshine, falling through the broken clouds, touched here and there the shadowed slopes and threw belts of light upon the water ­and these illuminated spots finely relieved the otherwise sombre depth of colour.  Our boat was slow, and we had between two and three hours of unsurpassed scenery before reaching our destination.  An immense raft of timber, gathered from the loose logs which are floated down the Lougen Elv, lay at the head of the lake, which contracts into the famous Guldbrandsdal.  On the brow of a steep hill on the right lay the little town of Lillehammer, where we were ere long quartered in a very comfortable hotel.