ed us a pleasant journey. It seemed almost heartless to leave two
girls, so young and unprotected, in such a wilderness, many miles from
any human dwelling, surrounded everywhere by wolves and bears; and the
smile of perfect contentment and cheerful resignation to the dreary lot
attributed to them, made me feel the more sensibly for their isolated
condition. But it is the condition allotted to women by the usages of
Norway; and while the young men remain in the low lands to cultivate
the soil and gather the corn, the females are banished to the mountains
to tend the flocks. Sometimes, among the most distant and unfrequented
mountains, a hut, like this, may be met with, inhabited by a single
girl; and holding no communication with her fellow creatures she drags
on the bright time of summer in the profoundest solitude, quite
regardless, apparently, of the bereavement of all social intercourse, or
of the horrible death that may overtake her by the hunger and ferocity
of wild beasts.

We now travelled with more briskness, not only lured by the chance of
coming up with the herd of rein-deer, but pursued by the moss-grown
phantom of a mountain couch. An endless forest of firs lay on our right
hand, and the nearer we approached it, the more clearly we could hear
the howl of wolves; and whenever we reached an elevated mound of ground
we thought to see a troop of them galloping forth to their nightly
depredations. Mountainous ridge after ridge we climbed, but along the
wide expanse our eyes could alight on no lake; and only through a chasm,
far away between two mountains, the lead-coloured water of the Sogne
Fiord momentarily deceived the sight. The guide kept his place in front
and led the way, bounding from valley to mountain-top like a spirit of
Indian rubber; and unwearied in his tongue as he seemed in body, he
continued shouting, cheerily, in a strange, drawling chant,

"Salt, h-o-o-o! salt, h-o-o-o! salt, h-o-o-o!"

"Salt" in the Norwegian language signifies salt, as it does in ours; but
the vowel has a soft pronunciation. The rein-deer are very fond of salt,
and the wildest of them will follow a person, who holds some salt in his
hand, for miles together. To put salt on a bird's tail, and catch it,
may be an English piece of jocularity; but the Norwegian would be
puzzled to think why we should attach a joke to such an act; and to
prove to an Englishman the inaptitude of the proverb, the Norseman will
go forth with his h