362 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Che Sportsman Tourist, 
FUR AND FEATHER IN NORWAY. 
| Es the juvenile years of man there is oftimes a period 
when he longeth most ardently for the day when he 
shall be sufficiently grown up to wrest from the hands of 
fortune his ambition of becoming ‘‘an engine driver!” The 
spirit thirsting for adyenture and hair-breadth escapes sees 
here the promise of full satisfaction to its desires, and looks 
forward anxiously to the time when this vast field of delight 
be opened toit. But vaulting ambition o’erleapeth itself, 
and sadly to-morrow disposes what to-day proposes, May- 
hap in after times that same locomotive will represent 
fo the would-be driver so much railroad stock, of fluc- 
tuating value, warranted to wreck the peace of mind 
of the owner; will maim and destroy he who trusts it, 
like some hideous caliban enangered at its own crea- 
tion, and prove the harbinger of as much woe as weal. 
Yet for all that I should not care to deny that perchance the 
writer, when battling with the riddles of a multiplication 
table, secretly cast mental eyes toward the day when he 
might mount and ride this fiery steed of iron. Such extray- 
agant hopes then formed and fed on fancies, haye since been 
all to well realized. I have ridden a runaway engine from 
Brussels to the Danish frontier; I have carcered in Mazeppa 
fashion over an atrociously constructed line in Sweden; I 
have sat in the tender with half a dozen dusky Arabs en 
route from Cairo to Suit in Egypt; and finally—not to call up 
other dire spirits from the vasty (and nasty) deep of an en- 
gine box, remindful of dust, heat, coal, shaking and general 
misery—l have carried the news of a railway accident in 
England from the miserable scene itself to the nearest station 
ona battered, mud-besplashed, and sorry specimen of my 
youthful dreams. 
But all these have been the freaks of chance, and hardly 
of my own seeking. Putting away childish things on be- 
coming a man, | find my wishes yet unsatistied, though they 
wear a different complexion. It is not st j’eta’s ret—not in 
these piping times of dynamite and socialism at least—but I 
do own to the soft impeachment that I would I werea guide- 
book compiler. Talk of the fluent language and varied im- 
agination of the popular novelist! Bah, the comparisons are 
ridiculous, for where is the novelist who can vie with the 
gifts of the average guide-book maker, Eloquence of diction 
and a rain of adjectives are his; superlatives drop from his 
pen with a readiness that sends the unhappy nouns tremb- 
ling and shrinking into the corners of the page, abashed at 
their own insignificance, while his imagination is a fecund 
ereuse of oi] which requires no prophet to bless and make it 
exhaustless. In his mental pocket he keeps the keys of an 
Aladdin’s cave, wherefrom he gathers whatsoever may painta 
moral or adorn a tale. He knows the way through winding 
paths and dangers (mazes which few who lean upon his reed 
ever succeed in passing) to the El Dorados of the Jand he 
writes about. and in glowing terms he pictures such scenes 
as only visit poor ordinary mortals in dreams, or that shadow 
land of opium smokers, where the misty sceneries are sen- 
tinelled by such shapes of grace as nove in like pensive and 
Elysium places. Then, too, descending from the dizzy 
heights which his aerial spirit haunts to the level of the every 
day world he knows, or affects to know (which to him, with 
his gold-tipped quill and shield of self-confidence, is about 
the same thing) all the details of the traveler’s route, and 
boldly creates his islands of fact in seas of words, without 
so much as asking if such creation is well, and worthy rest- 
ing for. The personal character of hotel keepers, and 
whether they part their hair in the middle or at the side; the 
family genealogies of all kings, saints and rogues, and what 
things they did and left undone; the domestic bliss of the 
peasant, and the gloomy forebodings of the political horizon 
—nothing comes amiss to his net, and all is set down for he 
that runs to read. As Toby Belch said when Sir Andrew 
Asuecheek showed him by practical experiment that he had 
“the back fling simply better than any man in Illyria.” 
‘‘Oh, that I had given the time to the fine arts that I have to 
cock-fighting and bear-baiting.” I suppose that I must be 
content to commence at the bottom of the ladder, and after 
establishing my reputation as a novelist, scientist, essayist 
and walking encyclopedia, perhaps I may strive toward 
that lofty goal tenanted by guide-book makers, and—but 
this way dreaming and madness lic. 
Now, of course, my reader will easily see the connection 
between babies, railway engines, and guide books, with sport 
in Norway, the thing isso clear. Should it be a little misty, 
however, it will soon explain itself. I had a guide book 
once, seyeral guide books in fact, relating to things Seandi- 
navian, and, armed, with these irresponsible effusions, be- 
took myself to Norway for a summer outing, to fish, shoot, 
and sce what I could see. And delightful to the degree 
which is called “‘frabjous” was that same trip. In a previous 
letter to FormsT AND SrrREAM I have told of the easy mode 
of traveling in this northern realm and of the glorious fish- 
ing to be had in lake, fjord and stream, to the honor and 
glory of which I would be again profuse in language if the 
aforesaid guide book compilers had left me any adjectives 
which, when held up to the light, did not show traces of 
being rather threadbare at the elbows aud a bit baggy at the 
knees. But as regards sport with the gun, candor (outside 
of red morrocco covers of course) must confess its non-ex- 
istence, at least in the abundance promised to the would-be 
Nimrod by those who don’t shoot, but get so many cents per 
copy of neatly bound promises. Surely my reader, if he be 
one of those who has listened to the whispers of fancy, and 
pursued with eagerness the phantoms of hope, must have ex- 
perienced the dubious joys of going to (metaphorically 
speaking) a sporting cupboard, and finding it as bare as Mrs, 
Hubhard’s, It is not an unheard of occurrence, and alas, the 
trap has caught me several times. Thave sat out in a swamp, 
a veritable slough of despond, near Marseilles, all night, 
waiting for ducks, but either the birds had the cholera, or 
more important business to attend to than me, for daybreak 
brought nothing but chills and discomfort, Likewise have 
I searched most diligently some thousand miles of the Nile 
for 2 crocodile (and so did his Arab sisters and his cousins 
and his aunts), but true to his title the ‘‘allegory of the Nile” 
never showed his head above water until the region where 
Mahdi is now making itso warm for the British was reached, 
Tn divers corners of the world I haye made preparations for 
a large harvest, and lived to Jearn that the sowing had been 
small, And now, for the benefit of such travelers as may 
intend hereafter to visit Norway, I propose to tell how, apart 
from its magnificent scenery, its many interests, its soft 
climate'and splendid fishing, sport with the gun isa delusion 
and a snare, and to sing a requiem over two of my three 
weapons which were never called upon to leave their cases 
during my journey in the land of the Vikings, 
Of course much of the sportsman’s success will depend on 
the method and season in which he makes trial of his for- 
tune, Should he be content to travel from skyds-station to 
skyds-station in the queer little buggy of Norway, the car- 
riole, making rests here and there, like the light-hearted hare, 
to fish or wander with his gun over the hillsides, he will 
probably enjoy himself far more than if he were to camp out 
upon some hleak mountain with guides and dogs, and after 
growing a beard like Enoch Arden with watching, be 
rewarded with more or less sport. The latter course is for 
the ambitious, but the writer, and his brother in exile, chose 
the former method, and to his mind a far preferable one, 
Yetit must be granted that game is hard to get at, when one’s 
visitations to their feeding pana are so cursory, The hills 
are clad in forests of fir and beech so deep and extensive that 
it is as hard to find birds and animals in them as the elfs and 
goblins with which myth has peopled their gloomy shades. 
Many of the tracks, showing an apparently smooth surface 
as sten from a distance, when entered upon present a wild, 
entangled labyrinth of growing and decayed vegetation, 
thickets of all ages matted together and interlaced overhead, 
the ground underneath which is littered with dead roots and 
fallen leaves, the accumulation of centuries, bound together 
into an almost impenetrable mass by struggling underwood 
and coarse, long-stemmed heather. To ramble in such places 
is like exploring the forest of primeval man. Here and there 
are plateaux overlooking the maze of valleys with their lakes 
and rivers—wild and desolate wastes of rank grasses, stunted 
shrubs, and gray, scattered racks covered with the lichens on 
which the reindeer feed. But neither in the woodlands nor 
in the more open spaces is shooting possible without dogs or 
beaters. 
We often regretted not haying brought dogs with us, for 
in the deuse coverinto which the game retires it is impos- 
sible to put up the birds oneself. Many a time were we 
sorely tantalized by hearing the heat of retreating wings, as 
we painfully forced our way through the brushwood in vain 
pursuit of the will-o’-the-wisp-like ryper. We subsequently 
heard, it is true, a rumor of an Enplishman at Hufton who 
had shot twenty-two brace of grouse to his own gun, in a 
day, and without dogs; but it was only a rumor, and had 
doubtless lost nothing from being current in a Norsk atmos- 
phere for some time. A good pair of working retrievers 
would be most useful in Norway, and the common bread of 
the country might form an excellent substitute for biscuit 
as their daily food. I believe that tourists generally carry 
their dogs, when doing long stages, in a net slung under the 
carriole—a primitive method, for which statement I haye 
only the authority of a ludicrous Norwegian caricature, 
wherein a traveler is depicted as disposing of half a dozen 
pointers after this fashion. Certainly I never saw a native 
dog which displayed the least genius for hunting on any- 
body’s account but his own, aud a superb black and white 
wolfhound, which I purchased near Bergen, has given me 
an endless amount of trouble in England, where he insists 
upon defying the game-protection laws, and keeps a calen- 
dar the shooting dates of which are sadly at variance with 
those of his adopted land. 
As to the right season in which to visit Norway, the sum- 
mer months are undoubtedly best for traveling, fishing, and 
general shooting, although, of course, the scientific sports- 
man, whose spirit is knit to great deeds of valor against bear, 
wolf and reindeer, will do well to woo his fortune in the 
winter time, when snow and ice have laid their clutches on 
the country. Until April, and indeed throughout May, the 
days and nights are still very cold. June, July and August 
may generally be depended on for fine weather, the ther- 
mometer in the southern valley ranging about the sixties and 
often much higher, while the freshness and bracing effect of 
the air, even on the warmest days, is one of the most notice- 
able and pleasant characteristics of the country. In Sep- 
tember and @ctober the weather becomes unsettled, the days 
shorter, and the nights colder, until winter, in all its rigor, 
setgin, Then indeed the face of the country undergoes a 
great change. Hills and valleys are blended together under 
one white pall, the lakes congeal, and the streams fall into 
the universal sleep. The roads are deserted, and the patient 
little Norwegian horse which, throughout the summer, has 
been the victim of foreign appreciation of his country, finds 
rest from the duty of linking the skyds-stations, probably 
glad enough to reach the end of the season. The heavens 
are gray as a roof of lead, and the earth is covered with a 
shroud of snow; the keen winds whistle o’er the moorlands, 
and through the naked branches of the fir woods, and the 
network of streams lie ice-bound between barren banks. It 
must be a calm time for the station masters when tlere are 
no more enthusiastic tourists to be attended to and farming 
is put by until the spring. Most of their attention is given 
to their flocks of sheep and poats, which haye been brought 
down from the hill pastures, where they have been grazing 
through the summer months. Occasionally they combine 
fora grand hunting expedition when some flock has been 
preyed upon by 2 roving bear, who now comes down from 
his haunts in the mountains where he has been for so long a 
time a vegetarian, and regales himself nightly with a sheep 
or goat prior to entering on his winter doze. i 
As the traveler drives along in his carriole over the in- 
land roads, he cannot fail to be struck by the seeming lack 
of life in the forests and meads through which he passes. 
The many small birds which lend to an English or American 
rural scene so much, are in Norway mainly conspicuous by 
their absence; and the hum and buzz of insect life, which 
gives a woodland its chief charm to the lover of entomology, 
are quite missing. Now and then woodpeckers may be 
heard laughing in the depths of the forests; crows and mag- 
pies flutter to and fro, or sit cawing and chattering on the 
neighboring trees, but the solitudes are otherwise unbroken 
by the sounds which should fill so vast a nursery of Nature. 
Undoubtedly, of all the bird species the magpie is common- 
est. The jerky flight and dappled plumage is rarely long 
absent from the landscape, and around the skyds-stations 1t 
is far too abundant, for the noise which two or three of these 
individuals will make when excited, or waxing eloquent over 
some disputed treasure trove, is appalling. The peasants 
have a superstition that the birds are the spirits of future 
children, and will never destroy them. I have met with a 
similar superstition in Hgypt in connection with the scissor- 
billed tern, which, although rarely seen on the Nile, is too 
strange in its appearance to escape the Arab’s fondness for 
ascribing powers of evil and good to the objects of nature. 
My native boatmen were terribly aggrievea when, in the 
bliss of ignorance, I shot one of these ‘‘kiiwans, and looked 
on me with the reproachful eyes which so haunted the un- 
happy ancient mariner. They told me it was considered a 
bird of good omen, and its virtues as many as the sands of 
the desert, but (and this was added with marked emphasis 
amid the saliims) mournful be he who harms it. Sometinie 
afterward Iwas capsized in my felucca, losing a favorite 
gun among other things in the mishap, but beyond that re- 
venge, I can impute no hatred, malice or uncharitableness to 
the spirit of the deceased bird. Perhaps its ghost is_ap- 
peased in its wing-wanderings to know that its mortal re- 
mains, or rather their exterior integument and feathers, 
stand in a case of glass, with all the usual trapping of a 
stuffed and rare specimen. 
The commoner birds and beasts in all countries haye usu- 
ally some legend or legends attached to them, and in many 
cases these are far more than mere idle stories. A really in- 
clusive and well-executed work of such fables—tracing each 
back to its origin where possible—would surely be one of 
much interest to many classes of readers. Thus, to return 
to the land we are treating of, there exists a strange and, I 
think, unique story about the Norwegian woodpecker, a 
pretty little red-headed, black-bodied bird. Once, if is said, 
there was a certain peasant woman baking bread, when our 
Lord and some of His disciples came near. Being hungry, 
He asked her for some food, and she, not knowing who He 
was, broke off a small piece of dough and began to roll it 
out before putting it into the oven. But, by a miracle, it 
grew and grew under her hands until it was as large as the 
original mass. Not liking to give so much away, she again 
broke off asmall bit and rolled it out, only to find it increase 
like the first. She did this several times with a similar re- 
sult, until our Lord, seeing her avarice was insatiable, 
changed her into a bird, and said she should hunt for her 
food under the dry bark of trees, and be thirsty forever, and 
hail with eagerness the advent of the rain, but should never 
drink or be satisfied, Immediately after this was said the 
unfortunate woman took the shape of a bird and flew up the 
chimney of the oven, making herself black as midnight with 
soot, and burning the top of her head, whereon a crimson 
scar is plain to this day. So now she is a black woodpecker 
and gets her living by looking for food under the tree-bark 
(an uncommonly slow occupation the framer of the legend 
doubless thought), and is continually chattering at the pros- 
pect of the refreshing rain, when she sees the sky overcast, 
but when the rain comes she can never drink! ‘The legend 
is not strictly logical—legends seldom are—and it is clear - 
that it must have been made a great deal further south than 
Norway; however, I heard it as a genuine Norske tale. 
Next to the magpie in point of numbers comes the hooded 
or gray crow. Notthat any of these freebooters of the air 
can claim the dignity of being classed as game; I merely 
mention them as dots of color on the canyas of a Norwegian 
sketcher. This wily bird, who apes the reverence of silvered 
head, and black garbed body, that he may the more easily 
practice on the credulity of tne world, does not patronize 
the farmhouses much, preferring the lonely hillsides and 
meadowlands. It is consequently generally seen en route 
and will allow the traveler in his carriole to come within a 
few yards of it as it sits in solitary state on the top of some 
rail or post, making rude and personal remarks in an under- 
tone. Small birds, except swallows and wagtails, are scarce, 
and hawks proportionately few. Only one eagle did I see in 
Norway—a superb fellow, who slipped from a mountain 
crag like some tumbling fragment of the rock itself, and 
after executing a few movements without a motion of his great 
pinions, sailed out of sight down a ravine, noiseless and 
grand. The rewards offered by government for the 
slaughter of these and other birds of prey, have been 
only too successful in their object. Yet, although the 
raptorials have been so vigorously suppressed, the game 
does not appear to have been benefited greatly thereby. It 
mifht be a wiser course to incite a crusade against the mag- 
pies, crows and ravens which, onaccount of their numbers, 
probably work more damage by stealing and eating eggs, 
than ever kestrel or sparrow hawk commit in occasionally 
striking down those grouse and other birds which are already 
enfeebled by age or injuries. Woodcock, capercailzie, and 
grouse are fairly plentiful, but very hard to get at in the 
dense cover which they haunt. 
To be successful with these latter birds requires one to 
make a regular business of it. To insure good sport, it is, 
in fact, necessary to hire a guide who knows the country, 
and to pay him well, which willin all probability make a. 
considerable difference in the number of birds the sportsman 
shoots. With guides and dogs he must go up country, and 
if he does not mind roughing it a bit, he may get in among 
the birds, and kill as large a bag as that fabled Englishman, 
who was said to have secured twenty-two brace in a day. 
On ducks, the tourist who does not devote himself entirely 
to sport, will have to depend for most of his shooting, and 
as they are to be found everywhere and in many varieties, 
he need have no dearth of burning powder if he wishes it, 
Teal and woodducks and mergansers are very numerous, 
and can be seen on all the lakes and fjords. The latter birds, 
however, are bad flyers, and dive most provokingly when 
wounded, while the promise which they offer to their captor 
when cooked is not a very strong inducement to the chase. 
A fellow traveler whom I met at Stee, a small station on 
Lake Lillie-Strand, showed me a duck of black color, with 
a white tail and red legs, which he had shot, but the name 
of which neither of us knew. Very proud, too, was he of 
his victim. For days he carried the bird tied to the back- 
board of his carriole, where the world might gaze upon it in 
admiration—and then he finally gave it to his skyds-carl, 
perhaps the wisest part of the proceedings. aha 
Of animals both great and small there is a. large variety in 
Norway. Elk, red deer, reindeer, beavers and hares abound 
in different localities, but are rigorously protected by Jaw dur- 
ing the major portion of the year, and a heavy fine is imposed 
on the hunter or trapper who takes them out of season. Such 
fearful wildfowl as bears and wolves, however, have no 
legislative shield to creep under; but nevertheless protect 
themselves with marked ability, and more or less success, 
showing in vengeful spirit a happy disregard of game-laws, 
and herdsmen’s laws, at all times. Of two things the traveler 
in Norway will all too soon grow wise in his own generation, 
if experience may prove the road to wisdom. ‘The first of 
these is that to give the skyds-carl of one’s carriole more 
than the modest claim which the government allows him to 
make, or to donate one’s mite to the chance beggar (a "ara 
avis, by the way, in this land of quiet industry) is to necessi- 
tate, when skyds-carl or beggar hath duly ‘tempocketed thy 
gratuity,” shaking hands with the recipient—a duty not 
always desirable—as the horny hand of labor (or idleness) 
sometimes looks sadly asifit had followed Mohammed's 
precept, and washed in sand instead of water. The other is 
that salmon cutlets and reindeer steaks form the staple dishes 
of the inland skyds-station, Not a bad complaint either, per- 
haps you think, but wait till you have tried this diet for two 
ered and then see if you don’t long to have changed this 
