REINDEER-STALKING IN RYFYLKE. 
23 
flushed a covey of ptarmigan, which, after circling 
around with irregular pigeon-like flight, pitched close 
behind us, the old cock as usual on the top of a rock, 
the rest among broken stones, where they speedily 
made themselves invisible, though only sixty yards 
away. We decided to “ outspan ” here, both to rest 
the ponies and to lay in a stock of ptarmigan as a 
basis for our larder. We soon learned a useful lesson ; 
for, rambling on after the ptarmigan, which seldom flew 
far, in half an hour we found ourselves hopelessly lost 
amidst chaos of stony slopes and rock. After this we 
never again lost sight of our guides. 
From here we proceeded direct to five thousand feet, 
across a rock-region whose awesome sterility passes 
words to describe—-the naked backbone of the planet. 
For miles, men and horses traversed bare bed-rock, here 
inclined in smooth steep slopes, there rent and contorted 
into chasms and ravines, their depths half-choked w T ith 
snow and the debris of avalanches. All around lay 
Stygian lakes, whose waters reflected the glaciers that 
fringed their shores, and the whole scene reminded us 
of those terrible landscapes that astronomers see in the 
moon. Probably but little change has occurred here 
since the age when the molten earth “ went off the boil.” 
Yet even here, where no blade of grass or green 
thing grew, the hardy “ fjeld-ryper ” (ptarmigan) rose 
from beneath the ponies’ noses, or ran from sight at 
amazing speed. From the crest of the pass we could 
survey our prospective hunting-ground, which lay 
before us at a rather lower level. Big enough, at any 
rate, was the vast fjeld plateau before us, extending 
some forty miles straight ahead, and an unknown 
