134 ROMSDAL 



to her slightly smaller size. She has the same bottle- 

 green head as her mate, the same snowy neck, flanks, 

 and tail coverts, the same rich chestnut shoulders and 

 back, and the same vermilion bill and pink legs. Pro- 

 tective coloration is not in the scheme at all ; so what 

 does she do? She lays her eggs and sits upon them 

 underground in a rabbit burrow hired for the interest- 

 ing occasion. The unsolved problem is : does she go 

 underground at the period when it is most essential she 

 should escape observation, because nature has endowed 

 her with showy plumage ? or is her plumage permitted 

 to be showy because her subterranean habit protects her 

 from the risk incident to those who wear fine clothes ? 



XXXIV 



Yesterday I stood where sea-green Rauma laves the 

 roots of towering Rornsdalshorn the hither 

 river- bank a pathless solitude ; but along the 

 far side winds the good highway into distant Gudbrands- 

 dal or across the savage Dovrefjeld. A melancholy 

 thoroughfare this in winter, when for three dreary months 

 neither sun nor moon rises above the walls of the most 

 tremendous gorge in Europe, but busy enough and bright 

 in this present tourist season, when big steamers bring 

 holiday-makers by the hundred to make the tour to 

 Flatmark or Ormheim and back. Seventy, eighty, ninety 

 I care not to count more there crawl the little stolk- 

 jcerres, each drawn by a fawn-coloured Norse cob. Surely 

 horse-stealing, were it ever a profitable enterprise, might 

 be best undertaken in Norway, where A's horse is dis- 

 tinguishable from the horses of B, C, D, and the rest of 



