Dec., 1890. through Norway with the vesey club. 
265 
THROUGH NORWAY WITH THE YESEY CLUB. 
(Continued from page 201.) 
As the overland party is now complete, and fairly launched 
upon that portion of its travels which is of the deepest 
interest alike to geologists and to botanists, and as neither the 
space at my disposal nor my own inclination is consistent 
with anything of the nature of a diary of our journey, I will 
call a temporary halt for the purpose of saying a few collec¬ 
tive words about Norwegian travelling in general, premising 
that Norway is not a country in any way suited to pedestrian 
tourists, although the average rate of travelling does not 
much exceed that of which a first-rate walker is capable. 
Railways, too, are few. Connecting the new capital, 
Christiania, with the old, Trondhjem, is the line upon which 
we have travelled, but, though the section to Eidsvold was in 
existence when I first visited Norway in 1874, the full line was 
opened, I believe, only a couple of years ago. A few other 
short local lines, and Norwegian pieces of main lines, make 
up a total length of probably between 750 and 800 English 
miles. The bulk of Norwegian travelling is done in one of 
four ways: inland, either on horseback or by driving; on 
water, either by rowboat or steamboat. To deal with land 
travelling first. The country is covered by a very coarse 
network of roads, most of them old, and following the natural 
contour of the ground over which they were made, but a few 
new and engineered. Besides these roads, and maintaining 
a subsidiary connection between various points, are horse- 
tracks of various quality. As the country is very sparsely 
peopled, towns in the inland being nearly unknown, villages 
very rare, and the proportion of mountains to population very 
high, it follows that roads are few and far between, and horse- 
tracks not very numerous. In our 54 mile drive yesterday 
we passed only one branch road, and that decidedly rudi¬ 
mentary. The old roads, such as we drove over from 
Lille-elvedal, are, in their history, there can be no doubt, 
improved horsetracks, made available for vehicles of a simple, 
narrow, and strong type. We go up hill and down dale, 
sometimes cross streams by elementary wooden bridges, 
sometimes ford them, and I may say that the fording of a 
mountain stream, swollen by long continued rains, and with 
its bed only a mass of rocks, is an operation which, in one’s 
early experience, at least, is just a little sensational. The 
gradients on these roads are sometimes simply horrifying, 
1 in 2 or 2J being not at all infrequent over short pieces. 
