THE GJENDE FLY.
_August 28._--This was the hottest, most windless and cloudless day that
has yet been made. The Russian and F---- went out with Esau and the
Skipper to shoot ryper, accompanied by a pointer, which the Norwegians
call a bird-hound. A brood was soon found and rose in front of Esau, who
with his usual promptitude got a right and left; whereupon the Russian
took off his hat, and bowing profoundly, advanced and solemnly shook
hands with him, protesting that he had frequently seen marvellous
shooting, but never, never aught like this; at least, that is what we
imagined to be the translation of the neat little speech which he made
in Russian.
A ryper is easier to kill, if possible, than the tamest young grouse
which gets up under a dog's nose on the calmest 12th of August; and Esau
thinks fame is like an eel on a night-line, easily caught, but very
difficult to hold afterwards.
Satisfied by having witnessed this extraordinary specimen of our skill,
the Russian gave up the chase, and returned to Gjendesheim completely
exhausted by the heat; but the others went on till the afternoon, now
finding a selfish old cock, whose fate no one regretted; now a young
brood only just old enough to be shot: anon lying down to rest and eat
berries, or bathing in the Leirungs Lake, but all the time extremely
happy.
F---- was so exceedingly polite that he would _not_ shoot unless birds
enough for all of us happened to get up at once, and one brood escaped
without a shot being fired, in consequence of our unwonted emulation of
his courtesy.
Near Leirungs we were fortunate enough to drive three large broods into
the same bit of willow scrub, and had some very pretty shooting as the
dog set them one by one; but there was hardly any scent, and the heat
soon proved too much for our bird-hound, so we returned to Gjendesheim
with a very considerable addition to the larder.
Then followed hours of inability to do anything except lie on our backs
with lighted pipes in our mouths, far too exhausted to smoke them; and
at last--dinner; and soon the cooler air brought relief and engendered a
return of bloodthirstiness, which impelled the gang of sportsmen to
sally forth and rake the river till it was quite rough with artificial
flies.
This was a trying time, for by some means we have established a most
dangerously flattering reputation as fishermen, and were bound to do all
we knew to retain it. However, all turned out right; the Skipper went
into the lake and got several beauties, and Esau did the same in the
river, so that we came in with the best bags by a considerable margin,
and could now afford to catch nothing for a whole day without being
dethroned from our pedestal.
The river, Gjendinoset as it is called, just in front of the rest-house,
is a wonderful piece of water; there are about 150 yards of rapid in
which the fish lie, then comes a fall, and below that there are nothing
at present but small fish, though the big ones will soon begin to drop
down lower for spawning. Consequently we all fish in the first 150
yards, and to-day between 50 and 60 lbs. weight has been taken out; the
same quantity yesterday, and probably for some days before; and the
fishing will be even better a few days later, for the Gjende fly is
beginning to hatch, and as long as he lasts the fish will rise well.
We have heard so much of this fly that we had been expecting something
rather gorgeous, a monster dragon-fly, or at least a second-rate
butterfly, or a decent imitation of a stag-beetle; and we have been
looking up gaudy Scotch and Canadian salmon flies, which we hoped might
be passable substitutes; but, alas for the vain hopes of foolish man!
the Gjende fly has come, and he is only a wretched little black beast
like a very small, unenterprising, common or garden house-fly of Great
Britain. He cannot fly decently; he is apparently devoid of sense; he
has no moral, physical, or intellectual attributes for which a human
being can learn to respect or love him; but--he _can_ CRAWL. If he
alights on the water it never occurs to him to rise again, and he allows
the trout, mad with the excitement of a fortnight's prospective
gluttony, to scoop him down their capacious throats by companies. If he
enters your mouth, which he does with a numerous retinue every time you
open it, retreat from that untenable position is the very last thing he
would think of; and with what may be a gleam of momentary intelligence
he seems desirous of still further increasing his knowledge of the rest
of your interior arrangements.
With characteristic obstinacy, unmindful of the teachings of logic, he
invariably acts on the fallacious maxim that 'an ink-bottle cannot be so
full that there is not room for just one more Gjende fly.' The whole of
the river here at the end of the lake, and for thirty yards on each
side, is now pervaded by this noisome creature; the water looks as if it
were covered with a mixture of soot and tar, the rocks are black and
slippery with him, and the atmosphere is charged with him, so that the
landscape dimly seen through the cloud looks as if it were dancing.
Gjendesheim itself is unfortunately not quite beyond the zone which he
infests, so that the windows look loathsome with crawling blackness; the
tablecloth is strewn with the corpses of those who have imbibed the
honeyed poison of the paraffin lamp and come to an untimely end, and the
remains of the 'boss pie' would warrant a stranger in the belief that it
had been composed of currants.
We think Pharaoh must have been a man of extraordinary resolution, or
else inane mildness of character, otherwise he would have sacrificed
Moses long before the fourth Plague was concluded.
Fortunately the Gjende fly has no insatiable craving for human flesh;
the Skipper, indeed, asserted that one fastened on his hand and
inflicted a wound that swelled enormously and remained swollen for
several days, but the better opinion is that the creature that
perpetrated this outrage must have been a viper, though we did not hint
this to the Skipper, because he is firmly convinced that whisky is the
only remedy for snake-bites, and that it must be taken in large
quantities.
If any one stuck up a rod near the river, in two minutes it looked like
a black fir pole with a bunch on the top; and John, who is a man of
great entomological knowledge, spent some time in studying this
phenomenon. He reported that the flies crawled up for fun, intending to
jump off the top ring, but when they got up it was so much higher than
they expected that they were all afraid to try, and those at the bottom
and halfway up kept jeering at the top ones and calling them names, and
jostling them so much that they could not crawl down again. He also said
that the swarm in the air was so dense that he wrote his name in it with
his finger, and it remained visible for nearly a minute.
Probably it is difficult for a man to speak the exact truth with his
mouth full of (_f_)lies.
When it was too dark to fish we sat round the fire and heard a good deal
about the various winter sports of Norway, capercailzie stalking, bear
hunting, elk and reindeer shooting, and running on skier, the snow-shoes
of the country, which are very different from the well-known Canadian
shoes, being made of wood, from six to twelve feet long, four inches
wide in front, three behind, about an inch and a half thick where the
foot rests, thinner at each end, and turned up and pointed in front.
Every district has its own peculiar shape; about here the right shoe is
made six feet long, the left one ten or eleven feet, it being more easy
to turn if one is shorter than the other: some are made of pine, some of
birch, and occasionally oak. The men of the Thellemarken are the most
skilful runners, but it is now quite a fashionable amusement in
Christiania during the winter, just as skating is in England.
_Sunday, August 29._--Our Norwegian friends departed for the happy
hunting-grounds of Rus Vand this morning, but before doing so they most
kindly offered us the hut there any time after this week, at the end of
which they are going south. We can hardly expect the present glorious
weather, which has now lasted for three weeks, to go on for ever; and
when the change comes, a tent will no longer be the abode of comfort and
luxury that we at present find it, so that the offer of the hut is most
opportune for us.
We parted with great regret from people who have been so kind and
hospitable, and many were the expressions of good-will and protestations
of eternal friendship, as we shall not see them again till we pass
through Christiania on our return home.
That return home has caused the Skipper hours of anxious thought
already: there is to be a wedding in England about the end of next
month, at which, although it is not his own, his presence is urgently
needed. He knows he ought to go, but hates to leave this blissful life
just when the best stalking is beginning; consequently he devotes much
time every day to the consideration of the subject, torn by doubts,
tortured by terrible misgivings, and harassed by indecision.
To-day, after being more than usually disagreeable under the malign
influence of his conscience, and seeking for inspiration, first in the
room at Gjendesheim, walking up and down like Weston; then on the lake
paddling like a penny boat; and finally roosting on a rock at the top of
the fjeld with his arms folded like Napoleon, and a gruesome scowl on
his face, or at least on those portions of it which were visible through
the mask of Gjende flies, he at last concluded to commit his fate to the
decision of an unbiassed coin, if such could be obtained from any
confiding friend.
With great difficulty he persuaded Esau to lend him one öre, value 1/100
of a shilling, which seems on reckoning to be about half a farthing;
Esau observing as he gave it, 'It isn't that I'm stingy, old fellow,
though of course I don't expect to see it again, but it _will_ throw my
accounts out so.' N.B.--Esau's notion of keeping accounts is to put his
receipts into one pocket, _and his disbursements into another_; if he
has a vague idea to within 20_l._ or so of how the money has gone, it
will be more than any one expects; that everything he possesses will be
spent is a foregone conclusion.
But to resume. The öre coin has no distinct head or tail, so the Skipper
named one side heads, and tossed. The thing fell on its edge, and rolled
round the table and about the room till it struck the wall, whereupon it
fell over 'heads,' and decided that the Skipper must go to the wedding.
So he sat down and wrote a letter saying that they must not expect him,
and that he should stay out here the whole time that was originally
intended; for as soon as he had dated the letter it occurred to him that
it would be childish to allow such a weighty matter to be decided by the
whim of a half-farthing coin, which might very likely be interested in
the affair in some way, and which, as he truly said, would possibly have
turned up 'tails' if it had not happened to fall on its edge and been
interfered with by an unauthorized wall.
Having thus acted according to his inclinations, and given his missive
to Andreas to post when he leaves Gjendesheim next week, the Skipper
became quite pleasant again, and went forth to his fishing 'ever and all
so gaily O.'
The ponies of Norway are wonderfully docile and clever; these qualities
were well shown to-day in a black one belonging to Jens which came to
take F----'s baggage over the mountain to Rus Vand. This pony was
brought down near the door of the rest-house, and left standing there
without any fastening or any one to look after him. The things were not
ready, so he waited about two hours, occasionally wiping off the Gjende
flies with his tail when their weight became insupportable, but
otherwise never moving. The busy world (consisting of Andreas and
Ragnild) pursued their usual avocations around him, goats ran against
him, and insects climbed over him, but there he stood placid and
motionless as a wooden rocking-horse. At last the baggage was ready, and
they brought it out and piled it on his back until we feared he would
break, and then Jens turned his head in the direction of Rus Vand, and
gave him a gentle push to start him; and he went slowly off up the
mountain, choosing the best way for himself, for no one went with him;
in fact, Jens did not follow him for about half an hour, but no doubt he
was found at the right place in the end. The whole performance reminded
one of a clockwork toy, and John remarked as we stood and watched him
out of sight over the pass, 'Now, that's what I call a well-trained
pony.'
During our stay here we had the pleasure of forming the acquaintance of
an elk-dog. This animal is taken out in a kind of harness to which a
rope is fastened, the other end of the rope being attached to the
hunter's belt; and his legitimate occupation is finding elk in a forest
by scent, and denoting their presence by his behaviour before the hunter
gets within range of the elk's eyes, ears, or nose. Mr. Thomas brought
him up here hoping to find reindeer with him in the same manner, as he
had been unable to get a Finmarker[*] broken to reindeer; but the
experiment has not been successful, for the dog has been so carefully
trained to elk, that he exhibits a large and lofty contempt for so
pusillanimous a creature as a reindeer, and will not confess that he has
discovered the existence of such a thing at all.
[Footnote: Finmarker is the kind of dog usually employed for
finding reindeer: the name being derived from the district of
which it is a native.]
But in addition to the fact that he finds no deer, he is a good deal of
trouble from the fastidiousness of his appetite. It appears that he is
accustomed to feed on dogs, and when he cannot get dogs he can rough it
very well for a short time on boys or any other plain fare; but up here,
where dogs are few and boys are extinct, he is having a very poor time
of it. The last place where he had a really square meal was at
Skjæggestad, on the journey up, where he was lucky enough to get a whole
dog and some portions of boy; since then he has only had limbs snatched
off adventurous observers, and altogether seems to be pining for want of
proper nourishment. He is about the height of a colley, but with an
enormous chest and limbs, a head something like an Esquimaux, a wiry
reddish yellow coat, and a most unkindly expression of countenance.
In the absence of sufficient flesh food he appears to be developing a
liking for man-diet, so we did not remain long in his society, for which
indeed we only craved after we had perceived through a chink in the door
of his dwelling that he was moored to a beam by a kind of anchor chain.
We have often heard that there is a certain amount of danger in the
pursuit of the elk; if the hunter is always accompanied by a dog of this
kind we can easily understand it. However, he was a very interesting
animal, and if we had a National School at Memurudalen we should
certainly have tried to buy him, as there is any amount of room for
_débris_ there. What a boon he would be in some of the thickly populated
districts of England!
In the afternoon we paddled leisurely back to our camp and found it
looking prettier than ever, but, alas! our little stream had ceased to
run. However, there is another one not more than forty yards away, so we
shall not be much troubled by its loss.
_August 30._--The sun still shines upon us from a cloudless sky, and
early in the morning, before any breeze springs up, the lake makes a
most beautiful picture, with its steep mountain sides and foaming
torrents so perfectly reflected in the green unruffled water. But,
lovely as it is, its beauty is rather wasted on us now, for it has been
just the same for the last three weeks, with the outlines all hard and
clearly defined, and none of the graduated effects of distance which we
get from the hazy climate at home: in this clear atmosphere the peaks
twenty miles away are as bright as those a mile or so beyond the lake.
Probably this is the reason why we so seldom see pictures of Norwegian
mountain scenery, and that the few which do appear are often condemned
as hard, cold, and unsatisfactory.
The most prominent object in looking towards the lake from our camp is a
curious pyramidal mound, about thirty feet high, close to the water's
edge. It is so regular in shape that we have devoted many hours of
cogitation and argument to the discovery of its history.
John (who is a man of considerable archæological fame) maintains that it
is a funeral barrow in which some ancient Viking was buried, and he
wants us to give up our cartridges for the purpose of constructing a
mine and blasting him out: we have vainly represented to him that it
cannot be a Viking's tomb, because there is absolutely nothing to Vike
up here.
The Skipper says it is a glacial moraine, 'any donkey can see that at a
glance;' and Esau holds to the opinion that it is an artificial mound
put up for ancient regiments of Gjendin yeomen and Memurudalen militia
to practise archery at. Possibly none of these theories give the correct
solution; but, whatever its origin, it makes a capital rifle butt for
our occasional shooting. Esau was heard to irreverently remark, as he
aimed at it with the Skipper's rifle, 'he guessed an express bullet
would rouse old Jarl Hakon out of that,' but nothing particular
followed.
To-day the Skipper composed an Irish stew as a _pièce de résistance_,
which, when it came to table, was unanimously voted the best of all the
excellent dishes on which we have feasted here. After dinner we made an
enormous fire for the sole purpose of warmth, as the nights are now very
cold, and during this fine weather after sunset a strong draught sets
down our valley towards the lake. We have ascertained that a like
draught blows down each of the other valleys running into Gjendin,
making the lake a centre. That in ours begins gently directly the sun
has set, and increases in strength until it amounts to a stiff breeze;
and as it comes direct from the vast snow fjelds, it is a disagreeably
chilly blast, which freezes that side of our bodies remote from the
fire, and leads us to envy the happy condition of a leg of mutton
attached to a roasting-jack. That, 'o nimium fortunatum!' enjoys equally
in every part the genial warmth, while man has no mechanical arrangement
by which his immortal soul can be rendered blissful through the medium
of a temperate body.
In the morning a breeze begins to blow out of the lake into all the
valleys; illustrating on a small scale the cause of land and sea breezes
all over the world. The Skipper and John (who is a man of profound
science) have elaborated a theory explaining the exact reason of this
interesting phenomenon; but as their explanation is entirely opposed to
the teachings of Dr. Brewer and the opinions of Professor Tyndall, and
involves a rearrangement of existing notions concerning radiation and
the movements of the heavenly bodies, we think it best to exclude it
from these pages, as this is not a simply scientific work, and we have
no desire to hurt the feelings of even the above-named misguided
philosophers.