28 
WILD NORWAY. 
there resounded the crack of a rifle. The shot was 
followed at short intervals by four more, and we knew 
our game was up. Here we were, more than thirty 
long miles from the nearest human habitation, and 
close up to our coveted quarry, when by sheer bad luck 
a Norsk hunter emerges from some stone-built den 
beneath the rocks, wherein he had passed the night, 
and snatches the prize from our very grasp. And he 
only got one small deer after all. It was now midday. 
Before us, to windward, lay our rival’s territory ; to the 
right we could not take fresh ground by reason of a 
chain of lakes which lay on that side, and I knew our 
chance was gone. In his zeal to show me sport, Lars 
continued to “ speer ” and tried a few more miles towards 
the left; but it was useless, the ground being all bare 
rock, and we reached the hut about 6 p.m. without 
having seen game. W. had returned half-an-hour 
earlier and reported similar luck. Paul and he had 
found plenty of new spoor, but seen no deer. 
The country traversed is about as bad “going” as 
can well be. Though the main plateau lies fairly level, 
it is intersected in every direction by innumerable 
chasms and ravines, mostly precipitous, and three to five 
hundred feet in depth, into and out of which one is con¬ 
tinually climbing, scrambling, and glissading. Between 
them rise barren rock-ridges and peaks of about equal 
elevation. The glens and corries, on their southern 
aspects, are fairly clad with grass and pasturage for 
deer. Here, amidst the rocks, grew blue harebells and 
ferns of two sorts, the common and the parsley fern 
(Cryptogamma crispa); while on the grassy slopes 
bloomed a sort of dandelion and the golden-rod (Solidago 
