THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
ful, but I cannot say I enjoyed it, any more than I did the following sleepless 
night spent under a rock. The wind and the snowstorms blew clean through 
the frail arbour of boughs that we had constructed as shelter, so there 
was nothing for it but to sit up all night with feet to the fire and backs to 
the piercing gale and snowstorm. 
Two days more of fruitless search and we were once more back at 
Grondalen, and so, by way of Bergen, home again. Considering the 
variety of our spoil, it was a most successful expedition which had re- 
sulted in five bull elk and a bear. 
As to Bergen, whatever its charms in other respects, it certainly can- 
not be complimented on its weather. From all I can learn, and my experi- 
ence tends to confirm the common report, it rains there 300 days in the 
year, and the other sixty-five it snows. In fact, so wet is the place that to 
appear in the streets without an umbrella is little short of a criminal offence. 
One day (so the tale runs) a tourist appeared in the Bergen Piccadilly 
without the necessary protection, when all the horses shied at the unac- 
customed spectacle. Another tiresome thing, not to be overlooked by 
intending visitors, is the “ close time ” for all objects of interest. Disap- 
pointed with the Trondhjem Museum, in which there was little to be 
seen beyond a squashed giant decapod that looked like a battered blanc- 
mange, and some stuffed beasts suggestive of a travelling menagerie that 
had died there, I had hoped to spend a happy day at Bergen, studying the 
Natural History Collection of which I had heard so much. But, no; it 
was Saturday, the Museum was shut, and a mean attempt at bribery and 
corruption, on finding my way to the back-door, was ignominiously foiled 
by a sweet-voiced lady who suggested that other people in the world needed 
a holiday sometimes as well as the British tourist. 
288 
