210 
WILD NORWAY. 
may here add that information received has been fairly 
corroborated by subsequent experience. Furudal con 
tained, moreover, some excellent bear country, and two 
bull-elks, estimated as carrying over twenty spears 
apiece, had made the lonely shores of Troll-botn Vand 
their summer home. No craven doubts or afterthoughts 
of vaulting ambition deterred us. It was our first 
attempt : yet we joyously backed our tyro skill against 
the shy elks of Inderoen in general, and this veteran 
pair of forest-monarchs in particular. 
Now, whereas the reindeer loves the highest fjeld, 
far above tree-growth, barren of covert, but broken by 
innumerable corries and ravines, which afford the stalker 
full scope for his craft and skill, the chosen home of the 
elk, in the reverse, is found amidst dense pine-forest, 
wherein stalking , properly so-called, is impossible. The 
mean elevation of these elk-holding forests may be put 
at a thousand feet, on an average; the timber-line 
seldom much exceeds two thousand feet, and above the 
trees the elk is not seen, save in the hot summer days 
when he seeks higher levels to escape the torment of the 
mosquito. 
These conditions naturally all make against the 
stalker. Opportunities to stalk elk—that is, to see the 
game at a distance—rarely occur except, as indicated, in 
the early days of the season, while the big deer may 
still linger in the higher regions of their range. Later, 
in mid-September, with cold nights and coarser weather, 
they move downwards, spending the autumn in low- 
lying forest, and in winter often coming almost to the 
valley levels. 
The pursuit of elk is therefore conducted, not by 
