ell its surname of the Buttermilk Country. At
Tiness, Listhus, Tinoset, and many other places, no bread is to be
had, or if there be, it is of such poor quality as to be uneatable.
One finds there only an oaten cake, known as _flat brod_, dry, black,
and hard as pasteboard, or a coarse loaf composed of a mixture of
birch-bark, lichens, and chopped straw. Eggs are a luxury, and a most
stale and unprofitable one; but there is any quantity of poor beer to
be had, a profusion of buttermilk, either sweet or sour, and sometimes
a little coffee, so thick and muddy that it is much more like
distilled soot than the products of Mocha or Rio Nunez.

In Dame Hansen's establishment, on the contrary, cellar and larder
were alike well-stored. What more could the most exacting tourist
ask than salmon, either salt or smoked--fresh salmon that have never
tasted tainted waters, fish from the pure streams of the Telemark,
fowls, neither too fat nor too lean, eggs in every style, crisp
oaten and barley cakes, fruits, more especially strawberries,
bread--unleavened bread, it is here, but of the very best
quality--beer, and some old bottles of that Saint Julien that have
spread the fame of French vineyards even to this distant land?

And this being the case, it is not strange that the inn at Dal is well
and favorably known in all the countries of Northern Europe.

One can see this, too, by glancing over the register in which many
travelers have not only recorded their names, but paid glowing
tributes to Dame Hansen's merits as an inn-keeper. The names are
principally those of Swedes and Norwegians from every part of
Scandinavia; but the English make a very respectable showing; and one
of them, who had waited at least an hour for the summit of Gousta to
emerge from the morning mist that enveloped it, wrote upon one of the
pages:

"Patientia omnia vincit?"

CHAPTER III.

Without being very deeply versed in ethnography, one may be strongly
inclined to believe, in common with many _savants_, that a close
relationship exists between the leading families of the English
aristocracy and the oldest families of Scandinavia. Numerous proofs
of this fact, indeed, are to be found in the ancestral names which
are identical in both countries. There is no aristocracy in Norway,
however; still, though the democracy everywhere rules, that does not
prevent it from being aristocratic to the highest degree. All are
equals upon an exalted plane