was one boiling, roaring mass of milk-white foam.

Fred Temple and his friends travelled in the ordinary vehicle of the
country, which is called a _cariole_. The Norwegian cariole holds only
one person, and the driver or attendant sits on a narrow board above the
axle-tree.

Of course it follows that each traveller in Norway must have a cariole
and a pony to himself. These are hired very cheaply, however. You can
travel post there at the rate of about twopence a mile! Our friends had
three carioles among them, three ponies, and three drivers or
"shooscarles," [This word is spelt as it should be pronounced] besides a
small native cart to carry the luggage.

Their drive that day, and indeed every day since starting, had been
emphatically up hill and down dale. It was, therefore, impossible to
cross such a country in the ordinary jog-trot manner. When not
ascending a steep hill, they were necessarily descending one; for the
level parts of the land are few and far between. In order, therefore,
to get on at all, it was needful to descend the hills at a slapping
pace, so as to make up for time lost in ascending them.

There was something delightfully wild in this mode of progressing, which
gladdened the hearts of our travellers, each of whom had a strong dash
of recklessness in his composition. There was a little danger, too,
connected with it, which made it all the more attractive. Frequently
the roads were narrow, and they wound along the top of precipices over
which a false step might easily have hurled them. At the foot of many
of the roads, too, there were sharp turns, and it was a matter of
intense delight to Sam Sorrel to try how fast he could gallop down and
take the turn without upsetting.

The Norwegian ponies are usually small and cream-coloured, with black
manes and tails or white manes and tails; always, from some
incomprehensible reason, with manes and tails different in colour from
their bodies. They are hardy, active animals, and they seem to take
positive pleasure in the rattling, neck-or-nothing scamper that succeeds
each toilsome ascent.

The shooscarle is usually the owner of the pony. He may be a man or a
boy, but whether man or boy he almost invariably wears a red worsted
nightcap. He also wears coarse homespun trousers, immensely too long in
the body, and a waistcoat monstrously too short. He will hold the reins
and drive if you choose, but most travellers prefer to drive themselves.