When my holiday in Norway came to an end, I was very sorry to pack up
and come away. Even when I drove the last thirty miles in a cart to
the railway I carried my rod in my hand, and when I saw a good-looking
pool or run in a river--we were generally near a river--I stopped the
cart for a few minutes and tried for a trout, and, what was more, I
occasionally caught one!
[Illustration: NORWEGIAN SCOUTS WERE VERY LIVELY.]
At last I got back to Christiania and to proper clothes and clean
hands--and I didn't like it a bit.
However, I was comforted by being told that the Boy Scouts wanted me
to Inspect them, and I did so.
There was a parade of nearly eight hundred of them; fine, strapping,
big lads they were, too, just like a lot of British boys, and dressed
the same as us, and very lively and active.
[Illustration: THE NORWEGIAN FLAG. As you will see, it is something
like the Union Jack.]
I had to present Colours to some of their troops, and their national
flag is in some ways a little like our Union Jack. And I told them
that they were as like British boys as their flag was like ours, and
that their forefathers, the Norsemen, were mixed up with our
forefathers in the old days, and I hoped that we would all be mixed
together, in a friendly way, in these days--as brother Scouts.
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