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I was really astonished to find how well I could understand it, and make myself understood, in the course of a few days, though candor obliges me to say that if there is any one thing in the world for which nature never intended me it is a linguist. I was in hopes of finding at Lillehammer a party of tourists bound over the Dovre Fjeld to Trondhjem, of whom I had heard in Christiania.
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. We left Lillehammer on a heavenly Sabbath morning.
This will account for all the bitter and ill-natured things I said of the Germans in some of my sketches, every word of which I now retract. But to come to the point of the narrative. In the due course of a vagabond life, after visiting Russia and Sweden, I found myself one day on the road from Lillehammer to the Dorre Fjeld in Norway. I sat in a little cariole an old peasant behind.
A railroad, about forty miles in length, is already in operation as far as Eidsvold, at the foot of the long Miösen Lake, on which steamers ply to Lillehammer, at its head, affording an outlet for the produce of the fertile Guldbrandsdal and the adjacent country.
When I came to study out all this, and consider the duties and obligations imposed on me as a traveler going a journey of three or four hundred miles; that I was to be subject to contingencies and liabilities depending upon the elements both by land and sea; that serious responsibilities fell upon me if I held the reins of the post-horse, and probably heavy risks of life and limb if the post-boy held them; that the inn-keeper, station-holder, alderman, or two men chosen miscellaneously from the ranks of society, were to judge of damages that might be inflicted upon the horse; that I must register my name in a day-book, and enter formal complaints against the authorities on the way about every ten miles; that the tariff might rise and fall five hundred times during the journey, for aught I knew, according to the rise and fall of provisions or the pleasure of the Amtmand; that conspiracies might be entered into against me to make me pay for all the lame, halt, blind, and spavined horses in the country, and my liberty restrained in some desolate region of the mountains; that I could not speak a dozen words of the language, and had no other means of personal defense against imposition than a small pen-knife and the natural ferocity of my countenance when all these considerations occurred to me, I confess they made me hesitate a little before launching out from Lillehammer.
Of Lillehammer, I can only say that it is a commonplace town of about a thousand inhabitants. It had a cathedral and bishop some six hundred years ago, no traces of either of which now remain. We drove out of it upon a splendid new road, leading up the eastern bank of the river, and just high enough on the mountain side to give the loveliest views either way.
The leading railway lines radiate from Christiania to Stockholm, Goteborg, Trondhjem, Gudbransdal, Telemarken, and the Valders. The longest line three hundred and fifty miles is from Christiania to Trondhjem through Hamar. There is also a relatively long line one hundred and ninety miles from Christiania up the Gudbrandsdal by Lake Mjosen and through Lillehammer to Otta.
The town of Lillehammer contains twelve or fifteen hundred inhabitants, whose principal industry consists in the lumber business. Immense rafts are towed down the lake every day by the returning steamers, and carried by rail from Eidsvold to Christiania. The logs are drifted down the Logen River from the interior, and cut up at Lillehammer and Eidsvold.
At its southern extremity is the port of Eidsvol, and at the northern is Lillehammer. These are situated in the direct route between Christiania and Tröndhjem. But the most singular fact attached to the lake is that it measures about fifteen hundred feet in depth while its surface is only four hundred feet above the level of the ocean.
Owing to the facilities afforded by the railway from Christiania, an excursion to Lillehammer is the most popular way of passing a Sunday during the summer months, and this being the height of the season, the crowd was unusually great.
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