Young Knights of the Empire Part 19

Another thing to look out for on these mountain lakes is that a bit of wind very quickly makes quite fair-sized waves, which, with a heavily loaded boat, may lop in over the side, if your helmsman is not very careful, and swamp the boat. So it is foolishness for any Scout to go on this sort of expedition unless he can swim.

In fact, every Scout ought to be able to swim; he is no use till he can, and he will always find it useful to know something of sea scouting.

The oars of Norwegian boats are worked not in rowlocks, or crutches, or between thole pins, as at home, but on a single thole pin, to which they are attached by a "strop" or loop.

This is a useful dodge to know of in case one of your thole pins breaks, as sometimes happens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: How the oars in Norwegian boats are worked.]

In Norway, the strop is made of a stick of birchwood (hazel does equally well), which is first twisted and twisted round to such an extent that it is as flexible and as strong as a length of rope, and is tied by twisting its ends round itself, as shown in _Scouting for Boys_.

A Scout should be able at any time to twist a stick into rope, but to do it successfully he must know which kind of wood to pick out for it.

That is one reason for knowing the different kinds of trees by sight.

While we sailed along we trailed a line astern of us with some tempting-looking flies on it in the hope that we might get a trout for dinner.

Suddenly, just when we were in the middle of a busy time over a squall of wind, there came a tug, tug, and a pull at our line. All was at once excitement.

"Down mast and sail!" "Reel in the line!" "Hold the boat with the oars!" "Don't let him break away!"

Steadily he is hauled, kicking and rolling over in the water, and at last he is safely lifted into the boat--a fine, silvery, speckled trout.

"What a dinner he will make!"

"How would you like him, grilled, fried, or boiled?"

Alas! we thought a good deal about what sort of dinner he would make.

And he did make a dinner, too--but not for us!

We presently heard Bruce crunching and munching something. He had not waited for the fish to be fried, or grilled, or boiled. He just ate him as he was. We only had bread and b.u.t.ter and coffee for dinner that day--without any trout. We didn't even mention trout during the meal.

We didn't seem to want any, or we pretended we didn't.

Still, we had a very jolly dinner at a beautiful spot where we landed on the sh.o.r.e of the lake. Then after a further bit of sailing and rowing we reached the end of the lake.

Here we hauled up our boat high and dry, leaving all her gear in her, for n.o.body steals things in Norway. We "humped our packs" on to our backs, and, with rod and gun in hand and the dogs trotting alongside, we started up the hills through the forest, bogs, and rocks, to get to the farm three miles away, where we were to spend the night at the foot of the mountains.

THE JASJVOLD SAETER.

That means the name of the farm where we stopped, and we made it our headquarters for several days.

"Saeter" means "summer farm." The Norwegian farmers are mostly dairy and cattle farmers, and in the summer they take their herds up on to the high ground for the grazing, and bring them back into the lower and warmer valleys in winter.

Our farmer at Jasjvold was named Slackman; and he was a slack man to look at--very wild and unkempt, with a tousled head of hair, and a rough beard; clothed in a blue jumper, and breeches and rough stockings, and carrying a big knife in his belt, he looked as if he could and would willingly slit your throat while you were asleep; but on Sundays he was a very different character.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE JASJVOLD SAETER.]

Even away up here in the mountains, far away from any neighbours, he did not forget to keep the Sabbath, and he appeared very clean and smart, neatly dressed, with white collar and tie, hair and beard trimmed, and altogether so different that at first glance I did not recognise him on Sunday morning.

But, in spite of his wild week-day appearance, he was a most cheery, kind-hearted man, always anxious to do good turns for us, and to help us in every way. In the evenings he would come and sit with us, eager to teach us Norwegian, and equally anxious himself to learn English.

So we got along splendidly together.

The saeter is a group of farm buildings; each one is a separate single-storied log house. There is the farmer's house, the house for guests (in which we lived), the men's house, the dairy, the bakehouse, and the "staboor," which is a kind of hayloft, stable, and manure shed all in one. Being built on the side of a hill, it has three storeys on one side, and only one or two on the uphill side.

The hay is put into the top storey, and can be dropped down through a trapdoor into the stable, which is on the second floor. Then the stable is cleaned out through trapdoors, which let all the dirt fall into the lower storey, from which it can be carted away to manure the fields.

A curious thing about most of the Norwegian farms is that there are no muddy cart tracks to be seen, the gra.s.s is green right up to the doors. Then there are no chickens about the place, as a rule; nor are there beehives, nor any garden. The carts are very small and low, sometimes on wheels, sometimes on runners, as sledges. The harness is very light, and yet strong; the driver walks behind the cart and drives the horse with a long pair of rope reins.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CARTS ARE SMALL AND LOW.]

Our house in the saeter was, like all the others, a single-storied log house, with a roof of planks covered with birchbark, over which is spread a thick layer of earth, which soon becomes gra.s.s-grown, so that it looks as if the roof were made of turf.

There were three or four rooms in the house, nice, clean rooms, with comfortable beds, and a great big open fire hearth in the corner, in which you light up your log fire whenever you like to have it--and we liked it pretty nearly always, for at this height, nearly 4000 feet, close to snow-clad mountains, the evenings and early mornings were very cold.

On our door was a big lock, and a lock in this country is not boxed up inside iron casing but is left open to view, so that you can see how it works, and get your fingers pinched in it if you like to be careless.

The farmer's wife, a kind, cheery, clean, motherly woman, was always cooking up good things for us, and feeding us to such an extent that if we had stopped there much longer we should have grown too fat to carry out our expedition.

She didn't understand a word of English, but she used to stop her work every now and then to come and hear us having our Norwegian lessons, and she used simply to howl with laughing at our attempts to p.r.o.nounce the words the right way.

The food she used to give us is much the same as you get everywhere in Norway. For breakfast, which is generally about nine or ten o'clock (we persuaded her to give it to us much earlier), you have a cup of coffee and two or three gla.s.ses of milk, home-made bread, and a kind of thin oatmeal cake, b.u.t.ter, and goats'-milk cheese.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LOCK ON OUR DOOR.]

Dinner is usually about three in the afternoon, but we never had any, as we were out all day, and took bread and coffee with us. Supper, at nine o'clock, was much the same as breakfast, with the addition of trout, or soup, and stewed fruit and cream, again with milk to drink.

There was one girl, who waited on us and did all the work of the house. I never saw any servant do half as much as she did, and yet she was always neat and clean and smiling.

She chopped our firewood, made our beds, greased our boots, waited at table, scrubbed the floors, tables, and chairs every day. You never saw a place so clean, If I were sitting at a table writing when she was on the scrub, I was politely requested to lift my feet up while she did the floor beneath them!

Then there was a boy at the saeter, who, though he could not speak a word of English, was a very nice English-looking lad.

He was in charge of the pony and cart, and his two ponies were the cheekiest, tamest things I have seen. They would follow you about like dogs, and seemed to understand what you said to them. That was all due to kind treatment by their young master.

This boy used to be sent off on long journeys over very rough country in charge of the cart. Then sometimes he would milk the cows and goats. Whenever he had any spare time he would take down his great 18-foot rod, and go fishing for trout, and generally he brought back some good ones, too. Then he was a handy carpenter, and understood mending a boat and sharpening tools on a grindstone. All these are things which a Scout should be able to do, but I wonder how many of them an ordinary boy in England can do.

Then, sharpening your tools is a very useful thing to practise for putting an edge on to your axe or knife.

There is a saying among Sikh soldiers in India, when speaking of any bad act, that it is "as disgraceful as having a blunt sword." A Sikh always keeps his as sharp as a razor. It is a disgrace to him if it is blunt.

So, too, a woodman would never be seen with a blunt axe or knife in camp. He would never get through his work if he had them. Yet I often see Boy Scouts go into camp with axes so blunt that they will cut nothing, and their knives very little better. You don't know the pleasure of handling an axe till you have used a really sharp one.

And then every Scout ought to know how to sharpen his own axe on a grindstone. You must wet the stone first, and then get someone to turn it, running the wheel away from you, while you lay the blade with its back towards you, and its edge in the same direction as the wheel is moving, and pa.s.s it gently on to the stone, doing each side of the blade in turn a little at a time until the whole blade becomes bright, especially at the cutting edge.

EXPLORING THE GORGE.