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At one point of the road, beyond Folkstuen, where a sluggish lagoon mingles its waters with the barren slopes of the Fjeld, I saw an Englishman standing up to his knees in a dismal marsh fishing for trout. The weather was cold enough to strike a chill into one's very marrow; yet this indefatigable sportsman had come more than a thousand miles from his native country to enjoy himself in this way.
Ask the Highland shepherd who has imprudently gone to sleep under the "blowin' sna"; question the Scandinavian, whose calling compels him to encamp on the open "fjeld"; interrogate Swede or Norwegian, Finn or Lapp, and you may discover the danger of being "smoored."
Here the country is one vast wilderness of pine-clad mountains, green winding valleys, and raging torrents of water dashing down over the jagged rocks thousands of feet below. It was nearly night when I reached Dombaas, the last station before ascending the Dovre Fjeld.
Seven of our permanent guests now left together: the telephone operators, Tradesman Batt, Schoolmistresses Johnsen and Palm, and two men who were in some sort of business, I don't quite know what. This whole party went across the fjeld to Stordalen to be driven about in cars. Cases of various kinds of foodstuffs arrived for Paul; they were carried up one evening by a man from the village.
The pale yellow stars blossom out above the hills again, as they did on that first night when we were driving down into the Valders. Frederik leans over the back of the seat, telling us marvellous tales, in his broken English, of the fishing in a certain lake among the mountains, and of the reindeer-shooting on the fjeld beyond it.
Josephine, the dear girl, made her feet a breeze beneath her skirts, and got him into the living room, with its piano and its earthenware bowls with beaded edges. When he was leaving, he brought out his small change, which Josephine received in her gray, young-girl's fingers. On the other side of the fjeld, Solem was given two crowns for acting as guide, and that was good pay.
Peder was not so lively on the way back, not because he was fatigued, for in showing us how they danced on the fjeld, he flung himself into the air in a marvellous manner, and turned over twice before coming down, but partly because he had broken our bottle of milk, and partly because there was something on his mind. I waited patiently, knowing that it would come out at last, as indeed it did.
"Oh," said he, "it does not look so ugly in the book." His delight on getting the money created some amusement. "Indeed," he protested, "I am poor, and want it; and you need not laugh." The last gush of sunset was brightening the tops of the savage fjeld when the horses arrived. We had waited two hours and three quarters and I therefore wrote a complaint in the post-book in my best Norsk.
I had a social chat with the telegraph-man, however a very respectable and intelligent person who gave me the latest news; and with this, and good supper and bed, I was obliged to rest content. Leaving Dombaas at an early hour, I soon began to ascend a long slope, reaching, by a gradual elevation, to the Dovre Fjeld.
A good wholesome meal is spread before you in the genuine backwoods style, and you may eat as much as you please, which is a rare luxury to one who has been stinted and starved at the hotels on the Continent. I remember, at one station beyond the Dovre Fjeld, Bennett's Hand-book says, "Few rooms, but food supplied in first-rate style when Miss Marit is at home.
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