THE ELK IN NORWAY. 143 



position to shelter your head and part of your bodies 

 from the wind and rain at night), blankets, two or 

 three tin kettles, tea, sugar, ship biscuit, and salt pork, 

 and last, but most important of all, an axe. It is 

 no easy work sometimes in '.changing country ' after a 

 hard morning's hunting to have to shoulder your heavy 

 bundle in the afternoon and trudge some ten miles more 

 through the dense forest, often through swamps and 

 over ' windfalls,' with only the left hand free to climb 

 over the latter. Happy is one if encamping that night 

 one can feel out a ' var,' or Balsam fir, to make one's 

 bed. But it is a glorious life !" 



' I think," adds my informant, " that the moose 

 of North America is larger than the European elk. 

 Certainly the heads are much finer in America. I have 

 seen a great number of heads in Osterdalen and else- 

 where, and none are to be compared to mine, or to 

 many others I have seen in Nova Scotia." But to 

 return. 



Amongst the wild animals of Norway the bear, the 

 w r olf, the lynx, and the glutton are the elk's deadliest 

 foes. Probably fewer fall a victim to the "paw of the 

 bear" than to either of the animals above mentioned. 

 Indeed, Mr. Asbjornsen mentions that in Osterdal it 

 was looked upon as an improbability, almost amounting 

 to an impossibility, that a bear would kill an elk, 

 and that when such was reported to have been the 



