gave me the latest news; and with this, and a good supper and bed, I was obliged to rest content.

CHAPTER XXXII.

JOHN BULL ABROAD.

LEAVING Dombaas at an early hour, I soon began to ascend a long slope, reaching, by a gradual elevation, to the Dovre Fjeld. The vegetation began to grow more and more scanty on the wayside, consisting mostly of lichens and reindeer moss. I passed through some stunted groves of pine, which, however, were bleached and almost destitute of foliage. The ground on either side of the road was soft, black, and boggy, abounding in springs and scarcely susceptible of cultivation. At this elevation grain is rarely planted, though I was told potatoes and other esculents are not difficult to raise. On the left of the road, approaching the summit, lies a range of snow-capped mountains between the Dovre Fjeld and Molde; on the right a series of rocky and barren hills of sweeping outline, presenting an exceedingly desolate aspect. In the course of an hour after leaving Dombaas, having walked most of the way, I fairly reached the grand plateau of the Dovre Fjeld. The scene at this point of the journey is inexpressibly desolate.

Bare, whitish-colored hills bound the horizon on the right; in front is a dreary waste, through which the road winds like a thread till lost in the dim haze of the distance; and to the left the everlasting snows of Snaehatten. A few wretched cabins are scattered at remote intervals over the desert plains, in which the shepherds seek shelter from the inclemency of the weather, which even in midsummer is often piercingly raw. Herds of cattle, sheep, and goats were grazing over the rocky wastes of the Fjeld. Reindeer are sometimes seen in this vicinity, but not often within sight of the road. The only vegetation produced here is reindeer moss, and a

coarse sort of grass growing in bunches over the plain. I met several shepherds on the way dressed in something like a characteristic costume-frieze jackets with brass buttons, black knee-breeches, a red night-cap, and armed with the usual staff or shepherd's crook, represented in pictures, and much discoursed of by poets:

"Methinks it were a happy life

To be no better than a homely swain ;"

but not on the Dovre Fjelds of Norway. It must be rather a dull business in that region, taking into consideration the barren plains, the bleak winds, and desolate aspect of the country. No sweet hawthorn bushes are there, beneath which these rustic philosophers can sit, "Looking on their silly sheep."

Shepherd life must be a very dismal reality indeed. And yet there is no accounting for tastes. At one point of the road, beyond Folkstuen, where a sluggish lagoon mingles its waters with the barren slopes of the Fjeld, I saw an Englishman standing up to his knees in a dismal marsh fishing for trout.

The weather was cold enough to strike a chill into one's very marrow; yet this indefatigable sportsman had come more than a thousand miles from his native country to enjoy himself in this way. He was a genuine specimen of an English snob-self-sufficient, conceited, and unsociable; looking neither to the right nor the left, and terribly determined not to commit himself by making acquaintance with casual travelers speaking the English tongue. I stopped my cariole within a few paces and asked him "what luck?" One would think the sound of his native tongue would have been refreshing to him in this dreary wilderness; but, without deigning to raise his head, he merely answered in a gruff tone, "Don't know, sir-don't know!" I certainly did not suspect him of knowing much, but thought that question at least would not be beyond the limits of his intelligence. Finding him insensible to the approaches of humanity, I revenged myself for his rudeness by making a sketch

of his person, which I hope will be recognized by his friends in England should he meet with any misfortune in the wilds of Norway. They will at least know where to search for his body, and be enabled to recognize it when they find it. This man's sense of enjoyment re

minded me of the anecdote told by Longfellow in Hyperion, of an Englishman who sat in a tub of cold water every morning while he ate his breakfast and read the newspapers.

I met with many such in the course of my tour. Is it not a little marvelous what hardships people will encounter for pleasure? Here was a man of mature age,

in the enjoyment perhaps of a comfortable income, who had left his country, with all its attractions, for a dreary desert in which he was utterly isolated from the world. He was not traveling—not reading, not surrounded by a few congenial friends who could make a brief exile pleasant, but utterly alone; ignorant, no doubt, of the language spoken by the few shepherds in the neighborhood; up to his knees in a pool of cold water; stubbornly striving against the most adverse circumstances of wind and weather to torture out of the water a few miserable little fish! Of what material can such a man's brain be composed, if he be gifted with brain at all? Is it mud, clay, or water; or is it all a bog? Possibly he was a lover of nature; but if you examine his portrait you will perceive that there is nothing in his personal appearance to warrant that suspicion. Even if such were the case, this was not the charming region described by the quaint old Walton, where the scholar can turn aside "toward the high honeysuckle hedge," or "sit and sing while the shower falls upon the teeming earth, viewing the silver streams glide silently toward their centre, the tempestuous sea," beguiled by the harmless lambs till, with a soul possessed with content, he feels "lifted above the earth." Nor was the solitary angler of the Dovre Fjeld a man likely to be lifted from the earth by any thing so fragile as the beauties of nature. His weight -sixteen stone at least-would be much more likely to sink him into it.

As I approached the neighborhood of Djerkin on the Dovre Fjeld, famous as a central station for hunting expeditions, I met several English sportsmen armed with rifles, double-barreled guns, pistols, and other deadly weapons, on their way to the defiles of the adjacent mountains in search of the black bears which are said to infest that region. One of these enthusiastic gentlemen was seated in a cariole, and traveled for some distance in front of me. Taking into view the rotundity of his person, which overhung the little vehicle on every

side, I could not but picture to myself the extraordinary spectacle that would be presented to any observant eye in case this ponderous individual should suddenly come in contact with one of those ferocious animals.

Here

ENGLISII SPORTSMAN.

you have him, just as he sat before me a back view, to be sure, but the only one I could get in the emergency of the moment. It will be easy to imagine, from the dexterous grace of his figure, how he will bound over the rocks, climb up the rugged points of the precipices, hang by the roots and branches of trees, dodge the attacks of the enemy, crawl through the brush, and, in the event of an unfavorable turn in the battle, retreat to some position of security.