174 HAPPY HUNTING-GEOUNDS 



to delight the eye. The banks were carpeted with 

 lovely ferns, berries, and flowers ; the lovely oak and 

 beech ferns showing their brilliant green in the inter- 

 stices of the moss-clad boulders. Wild ducks and 

 mergansers rose from the long pools, lively small birds, 

 tits, mountain finches, and woodpeckers flitted or 

 climbed through and over alders, birches, and pines ; 

 and on many shelving banks of sand or alluvial soil I 

 will not insult it by giving it the name of mud might 

 be traced the broad impressions of the splay feet of the 

 otter. I never was fortunate enough to catch sight of 

 my four-footed rival, but it is given to few but very 

 early risers to watch his graceful gambols, or to see 

 him emerge from a pool with a captured fish. The 

 sloping heath-clad banks had the reputation of being 

 a favourite haunt of snakes, so much so that my fisher- 

 men cautioned the ladies who accompanied us to be 

 careful to look about well before selecting a seat on 

 the ground. I saw and killed one very large adder 

 quite a yard in length which I found basking in the 

 sun on a flat rock. I never saw a specimen of the 

 harmless grass snake either there or in any part of 

 Norway. 



The farm of Kaarvand was almost the limit of my 

 wanderings, but I was informed that there was a large 

 lake, just below the two great round hills which bounded 

 the valley on the west, which was at the time of which 

 I write rendered inaccessible to anglers or tourists by 

 the presence on its banks of more than fifty bulls, 

 some of them ferocious. The valley at this point 

 had a very narrow entrance, and as it was easily 

 guarded, the natives used to drive their old and use- 

 less bulls up there to graze on the rich pasture before 



