Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ...pitched in a more delightful or convenient situation. It stood on a platform of level sward, facing the broad, clear stream, and the opposite bank, which, sweeping steeply upwards from the water's edge, passed, with gradations of grassy slope, birch-thicket, and pine-wood, into the high, rocky fjeld. Behind it rose a low, sheltering cliff, crowned also with birch and pine, and affording in certain recesses at its base an excellent cellar for our store of Norwegian beer and other liquors. Standing, on a fine evening, at the tent door, one saw on the left the foaming current of the first salmon pool, and the curve of the glen where the lines of the mountain masses cut each other, shutting out all beyond except one huge cliff which towered above the rest, and long retained on its stern face a rosy afterglow from the setting sun. On the right lay the purple waters and precipitous shores of the fjord. Although the main valley contained no house, and none was visible from the tent, there lay in rather gloomy side-glens, which rose from the sealevel in a succession of ancient natural terraces as regular and clean-cut as if fashioned by human agency, two fairly large and prosperous farms. With the inhabitants of these we concluded a treaty, by virtue of which we obtained for a consideration the sole right of salmon-fishing, the use of a small boat, and supplies of milk and butter. The latter were brought to the tent every morning by two cheerful bare-legged damsels on their way to make hay along the mountain slopes, a labour in which at that season the whole of the small population was engaged. As might be expected, the establishment of an English camp in their valley was something of an event for the unsophisticated natives, and it was not at...