140 HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 



while it remains there, and I found Hvilested during 

 most of my sojourn thoroughly deserving of its name 

 as " a place of rest." Curiously enough my first two 

 or three nights in Norway formed an exception to 

 this rule. Something in the air, or possibly the effects 

 of the very rough voyage, kept me wide-awake in 

 my bed to a quite unprecedented extent, and I only 

 succeeded in breaking the spell of insomnia by taking 

 a delightful trip with my wife to Trondhjem and back 

 by stolkjaerre, a jaunt which occupied the greater part 

 of a week. The scenery all the way was a dream of 

 beauty, especially when the road turned to the north 

 after Gjora, and mounted higher and higher up the 

 hillside till the river threading its way through the 

 deep gorge at the bottom became a mere glistening 

 thread of silver. 



We passed few travellers on our way, and only 

 one acquaintance, Mr. Sargent the celebrated artist, 

 who had crossed the North Sea by the same boat, 

 and accompanied us to Sundalsoren in the little 

 coasting steamer, the Ganger Rolf, which used to 

 ply from Christiansund up the fjord, calling at 

 every hamlet on either bank with mails, goods and 

 passengers. He was driving a carriole along the road 

 above the beat of the river then occupied by Mr. 

 Sandeman, and was doubtless at work upon the picture 

 he afterwards exhibited of a schoolboy (happy lad) re- 

 cumbent on a boulder with two or three glittering fish 

 beside him. I think this picture figured in the 

 catalogue of the New or Grosvenor Gallery under the 

 title of " His First Salmon." The change of air and 

 scene, and the not unpleasant jolting behind the dear 

 little dun Norwegian ponies quite broke the spell, and 



