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How grand is his reply to those who advise him to ravage with fire and sword the rebellious district of Throndhjem, as he had formerly punished numbers of his subjects who had rejected Christianity: "We had then GOD'S honour to defend; but this treason against their sovereign is a much less grievous crime; it is more in my power to spare those who have dealt ill with me, than those whom God hated."
By three o'clock next day we were up with Vigten, and now a very nasty piece of navigation began. In order to make the northern entrance of the Throndhjem Fiord, you have first to find your way into what is called the Froh Havet, a kind of oblong basin about sixteen miles long, formed by a ledge of low rocks running parallel with the mainland, at a distance of ten miles to seaward.
At last the load of his forebodings was greater than he could bear, he gets up, steals into the Doctor's cabin, wakes him up, and standing over him as the messenger of ill tidings once stood over Priam whispers, "SIR!" "What is it?" says Fitz, thinking, perhaps, some one was ill. "Do you know where we are going?" "Why, to Throndhjem," answered Fitz.
Bergen, with its pale-faced houses grouped on the brink of the fiord, like invalids at a German Spa, though picturesque in its way, with a cathedral of its own, and plenty of churches, looked rather tame and spiritless after the warmer colouring of Throndhjem; moreover it wanted novelty to me, as I called in there two years ago on my return from the Baltic.
And now, again good-bye. We are just going up to dine with Mr. T ; and after dinner, or at least as soon as the tide turns, we get under way Northward Ho! Throndhjem, Aug. 22nd, 1856. We have won our laurels, after all!
In another half-hour we were stealing down in quiet water towards the entrance of the fiord. All this time not a rag of a pilot had appeared, and it was without any such functionary that the schooner swept up next morning between the wooded, grain-laden slopes of the beautiful loch, to Throndhjem the capital of the ancient sea-kings of Norway. Off Munkholm, Aug. 27, 1856.
"We were going to Throndhjem," rejoins Wilson, "but we ain't now the vessel's course was altered two hours ago. Oh, Sir! we are going to Whirlpool-to WHIRL-RL-POOO-L! Sir!" in a quaver of consternation, and so glides back to bed like a phantom, leaving the Doctor utterly unable to divine the occasion of his visit. The whole of the next day the gale continued.
I left Throndhjem with regret, not for its own sake, for in spite of balls and illuminations I should think the pleasures of a stay there would not be deliriously exciting; but this whole district is so intimately associated in my mind with all the brilliant episodes of ancient Norwegian History, that I feel as if I were taking leave of all those noble Haralds, and Olafs, and Hacons, among whom I have been living in such pleasant intimacy for some time past.
Of course my partner would be no exception to the general rule! nobody had ever danced anything else at Throndhjem from the days of Odin downwards; and I had never so much as attempted it. What was to be done? I could not explain the state of the case to Madame Hghelghghagllaghem; she could not understand English, nor I speak Norse.
Even a railway journey becomes tolerable when the track follows the course of a running stream. What charming glimpses you catch from the window as the train winds along the valley of the French Broad from Asheville, or climbs the southern Catskills beside the Aesopus, or slides down the Pusterthal with the Rienz, or follows the Glommen and the Gula from Christiania to Throndhjem.
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