nd our wants exceeded a pint of milk. This is not, however, the
general character of the Norwegians, for they are tender-hearted, kind,
and generous to strangers; but fear had superseded the sympathy of the
old lady's expansive heart; and had men of riper years than her sons
been present, we should not have met with so much inattention to our
necessities. Even the girl, young though she was, desired to administer
to our need; but sweetness of manner, simplicity, tenderness, and noble
generosity are unchanging types of the youthful female character in
every quarter of the earth.

When I got on board again, R---- and P---- were amusing themselves by
firing, one by one, at all the empty soda-water bottles that the
steward could find. The bottles were slung to an oar which was stuck
upright in the taffrail aft; and placing themselves close to the
windlass, my two associates secured a range of some forty or fifty feet
along the deck. Now and then a grampus would divert their attention; and
every time the fish rose, a bullet was lodged, or attempted to be
lodged, in his huge dorsal fin. In this way the greater portion of the
time was passed, altered only by rowing about in the gig, and seeking
for wild ducks among the crevices of the rocks. But the farther we
sailed into the interior of the Fiord, the more bereft of animal and
vegetable life the country appeared to become; the scream of the eagle,
and the report of the rocks as they split asunder and bounded down the
mountains, being the only sounds that varied the silent monotony.
Sometimes the swivels were fired for the sake of listening to the
echoes, which, by their prolonged reverberations, repaid us well for the
lard we consumed in greasing the muzzles; a salute of nineteen or twenty
guns, fired at intervals of fifteen or seventeen seconds, creating the
most astonishing uproar; and what with the shrill screams of the eagles,
the consternation of wild geese, and the falling of the rocks caused by
the violent motion of the atmosphere, the powder and tow were profitably
expended by the novel entertainment they produced. This amusement, I
must intimate, was a favourite one with all on board, not omitting even
Jacko; and whenever the yacht became land-locked, I could always hear
the distinguishing order,

"Load the swivels!"

If it were not for the wild grandeur of the scenery, the sail among
these Fiords would be most tedious, unchanging, as they are, by
indications of h