e; and on his boat he
and his family depended, no less than his cows, for a principal part of
their winter subsistence. Except a kid or a calf now and then, no meat
was killed on the farm. Cod in winter, herrings in spring, trout and
salmon in summer, and salted fish in winter, always abounded. Reindeer
meat was regularly purchased from the Lapps who travelled round among
the settlements for orders, or drove their fattened herds from farm to
farm. Besides this, there was the resource of game. Erlingsen and his
housemen brought home from their sporting rambles, sometimes a young
bear, sometimes wild ducks, or the noble cock-of-the-woods, as big as a
turkey, or a string of snipes, or golden plovers, or ptarmigan. The
eggs of sea-birds might be found in every crevice of the islets in the
fiord, in the right season; and they are excellent food. Once a year,
too, Erlingsen wrapped himself in furs, and drove himself in his sledge,
followed by one of his housemen on another and a larger, to the great
winter fair at Tronyem, where the Lapps repaired to sell their frozen
reindeer meat, their skins, a few articles of manufacture, and where
travelling Russian merchants came with the productions of other
climates, and found eager customers in the inhabitants who thronged to
this fair to make their purchases. Here, in exchange for the salt-fish,
feathers, and eider-down which had been prepared by the industry of his
family, Erlingsen obtained flax and wool wherewith to make clothing for
the household, and those luxuries which no Norwegian thinks of going
without,--corn-brandy, coffee, tobacco, sugar, and spices. Large mould
candles were also sold so cheap by the Russians that it was worth while
to bring them home for the use of the whole family,--even to burn in the
stables and stalls, as the supply of bears' fat was precarious, and the
pine-tree was too precious, so far north, to be split up into torches,
while it even fell so short occasionally as to compel the family to burn
peat, which they did not like nearly so well as pine-logs. It was
Madame Erlingsen's business to calculate how much of all these foreign
articles would be required for the use of her household for a whole
year; and, trusting to her calculations, which were never found to be
wrong, her husband came home from the winter fair heavily enough laden
with good things.

Nor was it only what was required for his own every-day household that
he brought. The