h and
prosperous. Our road was admirable, and we rolled along at the rate of
one Norsk mile (seven miles) an hour, through a land in full blossom,
and an atmosphere of vernal odours. At the end of the second station we
struck the main road from Christiania to Drontheim. In the station-house
I found translations of the works of Dickens and Captain Chamier on the
table. The landlord was the most polite and attentive Norwegian we had
seen; but he made us pay for it, charging one and a half marks apiece
for a breakfast of boiled eggs and cheese.

Starting again in a heavy shower, we crossed the crest of a hill, and
saw all at once the splendid Miosen Lake spread out before us, the lofty
Island of Helge, covered with farms and forests, lying in the centre of
the picture. Our road went northward along the side of the vast,
sweeping slope of farm-land which bounds the lake on the west. Its rough
and muddy condition showed how little land-travel there is at present,
since the establishment of a daily line of steamers on the lake. At the
station of Gjovik, a glass furnace, situated in a wooded little dell on
the shore, I found a young Norwegian who spoke tolerable English, and
who seemed astounded at our not taking the steamer in preference to our
carrioles. He hardly thought it possible that we could be going all the
way to Lillehammer, at the head of the lake, by the land road. When we
set out, our postillion took a way leading up the hills in the rear of
the place. Knowing that our course was along the shore, we asked him if
we were on the road to Sveen, the next station. "Oh, yes; it's all
right," said he, "this is a new road." It was, in truth, a superb
highway; broad and perfectly macadamised, and leading along the brink of
a deep rocky chasm, down which thundered a powerful stream. From the top
of this glen we struck inland, keeping more and more to the westward.
Again we asked the postillion, and again received the same answer.
Finally; when we had travelled six or seven miles, and the lake had
wholly disappeared, I stopped and demanded where Sveen was. "Sveen is
not on this road," he answered; "we are going to Mustad!" "But," I
exclaimed, "we are bound for Sveen and Lillehammer!" "Oh," said he, with
infuriating coolness, "_you can go there afterwards!_" You may judge
that the carrioles were whirled around in a hurry, and that the only
answer to the fellow's remonstrances was a shaking by the neck which
frightened him in