116 HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 



Exeter ; afterwards for many years the beloved and 

 respected Rector of St. Barnabas, Pimlico. He was 

 not so keen a sportsman as myself, but his acute 

 appreciation of the beautiful, and his well -stocked 

 and poetical mind, made him an ideal companion upon 

 a trip. 



I drop a veil over my first experience of the North 

 Sea. The boats were smaller, and the accommodation 

 far rougher than is provided by Wilson's present fleet, 

 and even now a bad sailor does not enjoy the purgatory 

 through which he has to pass on his way to the 

 northern paradise. Some robust and unfeeling fellow- 

 travellers came and scoffed at me in my bunk, and re- 

 commended boiled pork. With what joy I beheld them 

 prostrated on the third day when I had recovered my 

 appetite and got my sea legs ! At last we reached the 

 sheltered waters of the fjord, and I shall never forget my 

 first experience of the glories of the northern night. 

 The light never left us. Pink sunset streaks ended 

 the long day, and had hardly faded into dusk before 

 the east was again brightening with the first glow of 

 dawn. I was quite sorry when the voyage came to 

 an end, and the boat anchored in the harbour of 

 Chris tiania. 



Our destination was Aak, at the head of the 

 Romsdal valley, then an hotel, but now the site of a 

 villa, the property of the Wills family. We had to 

 make very different preparations for our journey than 

 would have sufficed at the present time. Now there 

 is a railway to Otta, which is shortly to be extended 

 to Dombaas, and from that point I have heard that a 

 service of motor brakes runs through the beautiful 

 Romsdal valley to Vaeblungsnaest during the season. 



