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Updated: May 26, 2025
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 fees for travelling by skyds are, it is true, disproportionably low, and in many instances the obligation to furnish horses is no doubt an actual loss to the farmer.
"Come, Mr Considine, you wanted to Where's Considine?" Every one looked round, but Considine and Hans were not there. One of the Skyds, however, remembered that they had fallen behind half an hour before, with the intention of procuring something fresh for supper. "Well, we must go without him. He wanted to shoot a buffalo. Will no one else go?"
Dobson did, indeed, think once or twice of his old chums on the river, but a feeling of gallantry prevented his deserting the ladies in the midst of danger, and besides, he argued, the Skyds are well able to look after themselves.
Holmen, hitherto a fast station, is now no longer so; and the same retrograde change is going on at other places along the road. The waiting at the tilsigelse stations is the great drawback to travelling by skyds in Norway. You must either wait two hours or pay fast prices, which the people are not legally entitled to ask.
Unless a traveller is very well versed in the language and in the laws relating to the skyds system, he has no defence against imposition, and even in such a case, he can only obtain redress through delay. The system can only work equitably when the people are honest; and perhaps they were so when it was first adopted. Here I must tell an unpleasant truth.
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.
Then there was a hearty welcoming and inquiring, and shaking of bands, while the travellers were congratulated on having just escaped the storm. While this was going on at Mount Hope, the Skyds were actively engaged in gathering in their rattle and otherwise making their place secure.
The Skyds, and one or two others who, like themselves, had built too near the edge of streams, were the first to suffer. "This won't do," said John Skyd, on the evening of the second day, as he and his brothers sat in front of their cavern gazing at the turbid river, which, thick and yellow as pea-soup, was hurrying trees, bushes, and wrack in formidable masses to the sea.
Hans turned short round, stretched out his long right arm the left being quite sufficient to support Gertie, and, seizing the German's shaggy hair with a mighty grip, held on till one of the Skyds returned to the rescue. It was also a melancholy march on that dismal night, for poor Edwin Brook was well aware, and fully alive to the fact, that he was a ruined man.
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