64 
WILD NORWAY. 
chalet of Solbakken, perched on a birch-clad slope hard 
by the riverside, overlooked all the lovely Etnedal, 
a verdant valley now glorious in the new-born foliage 
of spring, redolent of the blossom of bird-cherry and 
rowan, and resonant with the chorus of summer 
warblers.* Beyond rose fjelds, encircling our Elysian 
dale as with a mural amphitheatre, and rising ridge 
upon ridge to snow-flecked summits where, with the 
spy-glass, we recognized the bare bed-rock beloved of 
ptarmigan. The whole valley was but a mile in width 
by four in length, broken by foothills and old-time 
moraines. A quarter-mile away the hamlet of Etne 
nestled betwixt river and fjord, and, by way of touch 
with the outer world, was twice in each week visited by 
little steamers which sometimes brought us letters. 
The telegraph office was at Skonvik, eight miles away, 
over a mountain which we found to be 2150 feet in 
height; yet that aggravating wire, climbing the obstruc¬ 
tion on prehensile poles, elected to cross our river at the 
centre of its best pool, and afterwards traversed the road 
at five points, thus causing five separate anxieties when 
carioling with eighteen-foot rods up. 
In the morning our grey-haired gaffer, Lars, warned 
us that it was useless to fish before 4 p.m. But initial 
* Here is a list of the chief species noticed immediately about 
our house and garden at Solbakken in May : Pied flycatchers, two 
pairs in orchard : ortolan and yellow buntings, redstart, whinchat, 
wheat ear, sedge- and garden-warblers, blackcap, willow-wren, great 
and marsh-tits, goldcrest, white wagtail, sand-martins (arrived 25th), 
cuckoo, corncrake and woodcock, besides starlings, grey crows and 
magpies in swarms. On the green haughs in front were various 
gulls, herons, redshanks, peewits, sandpipers; and, high overhead, 
golden plovers sang their vernal song. On the hills behind preyed 
buzzards and ravens, ring-ouzels piped, and blackcocks crooned. 
