There is a different type of mankind in each port of call the weak and servile Singalese the Somali-half negro, half Arab,-from that mysterious horn of Africa of which so little is known ; and the garlic-smelling Dago of Southern Europe, who is neither of the white nor black races, but halfway between ; all these were in turn left behind, and, as I sailed up Kristiania Fjord, I found myself among a people like the ancient Germans of Tacitus -a type nearly extinct in Germany now, but common enough in the dales of Norway. Big and fair, honest and unsuspicious, are these kinsfolk of ours. In Norway an Englishman feels among his own people, and has no use for the quiet conviction of superiority which is forced upon his mind when he is among in men of "the lesser breeds."

Norway is politically insignificant now. She never recovered from the old days when she drained herself of her best blood to scrawl her name across the map of the world, to conquer and people Britain, from the Wash to the Firth of Forth, and found the Russian Empire under Rurik; - days when Hrolfganger's Vikings drove the French before them, and stabled their horses in Charlemange's Chapel in Paris, and took for themselves the pleasant Province of Normandy.

Of the Norse discovery of North America, in the year A.D. 1000, and the subsequent expeditions thither under Leif Eireksen, and of the small colony founded there, one may read in the Flatey Saga in Snorro Sturlesen's Heimskringla. The original account of these voyages, now in the Copenhagen Museum, was complete in its present form. about 200 years before Colombus, to whom the discovery of America was falsely attributed, was born. This mistake is owing to the ignorance of our Northern Annals, once so prevalent, which was due to the excessive attention paid to classic men and lands at the cost of our own history.

The Norsemen crossed the Atlantic in open boats, not in decked ships, such as Columbus had.

I saw one of these Viking keels which was dug out of a mound near Kristiania. It was built of oak, black with age. joined with long iron nails, and a hole was pierced in her timbers for an oar as rudder. This hole was not dead astern, but a yard or so on the starboard side. The ship was about 8Oft. overall in length, and with a breadth of l6ft. in the widest part.

I stayed at a little inn called the "Harold Haarfagre," in a street called Skippergarten. As there was no interpreter, you had to ask for what you wanted in Norsk, or do without, so at the end of a week I knew the names of all the things in common use, and could make myself understood with regard to such matters as food, prices, asking the way, or expressing any simple idea.

My verbs had only the indicative mood, my nouns were all in the nominative case, and I should have been hard put to it to say, "the uncle of the gardener has the pen of the sister's son," or words to that effect which, to judge from my boyhood's French conversation books, seemed to be the type of sentence most necessary to learn if you were going to France. I could not even have translated " Balbus builded a wall," but as I was not going through Norway building walls, or asking inane questions about pens, wheelbarrows, and gardeners, I got on fairly well.

The Norwegians do not laugh at your blunders, although on one occasion when I explained to a girl in Drammen, after being attacked by some elk-hounds which were annoyed by my foreign appearance, that:

"Aller hunder roper til mig i gaden," I thought I detected a smile.

I was trying to say, "All the dogs in the street bark at me," but it panned out: "All the dogs in the street shout to me."

About this time I met with a little adventure that might have had awkward results. I had arrived at a strange hotel, and, on retiring to my bedroom, which was at the top of the house, I opened the window by pressing the tips of my fingers on the bottom of the upper sash. It happened the sash-cord was broken, and the window fell like a guillotine blade, and the fingers of both hands were caught between the tops of the two sashes as the upper one fell. I tried to wriggle them out, but could not, and the flesh rapidly began to swell above and below the woodwork.

After trying for a minute or two to release them, I began to sing out for someone to give me a hand, but it was after midnight, and everyone had gone to bed; in addition to this it was very windy, and the storm, mingled with the noise of the waves on the beach, prevented me from being heard. The gas-jet was unprotected by a globe, and the lace window curtain began to blow against it, so I had to seize it in my mouth and hold it. I must have presented a comical spectacle, as with both hands imprisoned, I snapped with greedy teeth at the bellying curtain. Then the wind blew the gas out, and the smell of escaping gas, together with the pain, made me nearly lose consciousness. Twice my head dropped on my shoulder, but each time the thought that I should hang there by my fingers till morning livened me up again At last, feeling I was going to feint, I gave a final yell, and, getting my feet on the window sill, rested my waist across the top of the two sashes between my hands, with half my body inside the window, and half hanging out, so that when I fainted my weight should not fall on my fingers, and I should not have to breathe gas; but luckily my last yell had been heard, and I was released; but two men could not move the sash that had jammed against my fingers, and they had to lever the woodwork of the two sashes apart with pokers to release the swollen digits. No bones were broken, but I had been hung up there for twelve minutes, as I remember I had noticed the time just before putting the window down. This happening goes to prove under ordinary circumstances what a dangerous situation may arise.

I walked from Kristiania to the Roken Foss, a distance of one hundred and ten miles-a pleasant, but uneventful journey. The Roken Foss is a waterfall formed by the Maan River, dropping 415ft. through space. It's mostly spray when it reaches the bottom.

Next day I started to climb Gausta Fjeld, and had ten hours of the most trying work I have ever done. From the base you would think it was an easy, straight-forward walk, but there is no track through the fir forests that clothe the base of Gausta Fjeld and the adjoining mountains. After several hours climbing during which I nearly got bogged in a swamp, I emerged above the tree line, but to my surprise found I was on the wrong peak. As I had no food with me I was dead beat when I reached the summit, which is 6180ft. above the sea level. There is an alpine hut there for the use of mountaineers. This was buried in ice and snow, although it was mid summer, and the heat in the dales below was intense and the last part of the ascent had been over deep snow.

Next morning a heavy blizzard was blowing, which kept me prisoner in the hut for three days. As there was plenty of food this did not matter, but the view, which comprises a great part of Southern Norway, was hidden by this continuous driving snow storm. For about five minutes, one midnight, the snow ceased, and I clambered to the extreme summit, a distance of a hundred yards. The sun was just above the horizon, and tinged the snow fields, peaks, and dales below with a red glare, as though the whole land were drenched in blood, as it lay spread out for scores of miles like a map, and appeared intermittently through great masses of drifting fog.

I used to buy food and accommodation from the farmers and peasantry. They would think nothing of putting me, a stranger, to sleep in a room where was ranged the heavy solid silver jugs and tankards that were family heirlooms, and once, when I wished to get up early in the morning a girl lent me her gold watch over night. I had met her towards the end of long day's tramp. Her dog had flown at me- an incident I was getting pretty used to in central Norway, as the elk hounds scarcely ever see a stranger. After I had driven the brute off, I asked her if she could tell me the way to an inn, but. as there was none in the district. she spoke to the village minister, at whose house she was staying, and he invited me to stay the night there.

Conversation lagged, as my Norsk broke down if I tried to talk about anything else but food. Food has its limits as a subject of conversation with a stranger in a foreign tongue. To my surprise, my host suggested we should talk in Latin. Without the slightest hesitation I declined. This man minister of the remote little village of Grandsherrat, was apparently sufficiently master of Latin to use it as a medium of ordinary conversation.

About two years later, when in a shooting-camp between this district and Drammen, on the occasion of another visit to Norway with an English Friend, named Oddie, I got bushed. We had taken our food in sacks slung on ponies' backs through the forest to a lodge called Skuldkeröd, where we "batched" for a week. Having had very poor sport, I wandered off by myself at noon one day, intending to potter around and try and get an "aarfogle," a bird something like a wild turkey. Now the country round Skuldkeröd is a jumbled-up mass of mountains, gullies, and swamps, mostly covered with thick dark fir forest, and walking is made still more difficult by the fallen trees which lie about on the ground until they rot away. About the middle of the afternoon I got a shot at an aarfogle; it was a dark day in October, a heavy rain was washing away the remains of the last snow-fall, and I could not be sure whether the bird fell behind some trees or not. I picked my way across a small swamp to see, but could not find any bird, so thought I had missed him, or that No. 4 shot, driven by black powder, had been insufficient to penetrate the heavy plumage at the distance, which was about fifty yards. Not wishing to go through the swamp again, I tried a short cut back to camp, which was about two miles away.

What bit of track there was soon dwindled away to nothing, and instead of turning back and trying to pick up my old trail, I kept on until I began to realise I was bushed. Thinking a small creek running down a gully probably emptied itself into Ekerns So, I decided to follow the creek, because two years earlier, on my first trip to Norway, I had noticed a cottage on the shore of that lake. Whether Ekerns Sö was ten miles or forty miles away I did not know, but as one may travel for great distances in the mountainous districts without striking a house, I thought Ekerns Sö was my best chance, and accordingly followed the creek. It had been raining heavily all afternoon, so when the creek, taking its way between the rocky sides of a deep gully, forced me to wade, I did not get any wetter. The broken, rocky bed swift current and the twilight of the gorge, made one's foothold very uncertain, and once I slipped and fell in some shallow rapids, but recovered my feet lower down the stream without any hurt. Just as it became quite dark, I came to a drop of some twenty or thirty feet. and, though I tried to make a detour round this foss, the steep banks were so thickly strewn with dead and rotten trees, piled in massed confusion by time and weather, that I could not get through, so camped there that night. I had only one cartridge, a small bit of chocolate, two cigars, and no matches. I took off my stockings. and wrung the water out of them, then. after dragging some timber together to form a breakwind, I curled myself up and went to sleep. I was too far South for wolves, and the occasional brown bear is harmless if left alone. I had been told that one of the latter had met a little girl gathering multe-baer, a kind of cranberry. He had eaten the multe-baer out of her basket and lumbered away, leaving her frightened but unhurt.

When I woke up the full moon had risen the rain had ceased, but there was a hard frost. Where, an hour before, the fir trees had been dripping water, now from every leaf and twig hung a glittering icicle. In the open it seemed light as day. and far down the ravine the ice-encrusted firs reflected the moonbeams from a million points. I did not appreciate the scene much, as my outer clothes were frozen stiff, and crackled when I moved ; the hairs of my moustache were frozen together-it looked like one of those expensive cigars that you buy heremetically sealed in a glass case. I walked about for twenty minutes or so, to get warm, trying to remember all I could of the geography of the district with a view to taking the best route on the morrow. Seeing how light it was in the open, the idea occured to me to make a start then, so I entered the forest. which grew down to the sides of the stream, and began the ascent. It was so steep in places that I had to pull myself up by taking hold of the tree-trunks, and so dark among the trees that I could not see to avoid the slippery half-rotten dead timber that was lying about. After nearly an hour of this exhilarating exercise I emerged in the open again.

The first thing I saw was the breakwind I had slept under. In the darkness of the forest I had made a complete circuit, so I crept under my shelter again and went to sleep. Just before falling asleep I heard something moving under the timber I was lying on I fancied it might be an adder, which are plentiful there, but. as I had no other shelter, and was so tired, I did not move. So the night wore away-an hour's sleep, then the cold wind would wake me up again for twenty minutes' exercise. The one thing I feared was that there would be fog in the morning, but the first light of dawn showed clear and bright.

Guiding myself by the sun, I went due north. The broken ranges of hills ran from west to east, with swampy gullies between. After walking for some hours, I saw a patch of land a couple of miles away which appeared greener than the rest ; on it was an object which might have been a large rock or a cottage -I could not tell which at that distance. It lay north-east of the track I had set for myself, but, as I was beginning to feel weak, I decided to make for it. I had risen several aarfogles, but dared not risk my one cartridge except for a certain kill. Standing on a range I noticed exactly the direction my shadow fell, so that whenever I got to a sunlit space in the forest below I could be sure of my way. In about half an hour I came to the edge of the green patch, which turned out to be a glassy clearing, not a swamp, as I had half expected, and fifty yards away was a saeter, or mountain dairy hut. I walked across and knocked ; an old crone came to the door. I asked her the way to Skuldkeröd ; she poured out a stream of directions which I could not follow, but it was evident the way I had taken that morning was roughly correct, as Skuldkeröd lay only one Norsk, or seven English miles away, and had I kept on another seven miles I should have struck the Kongsberg-Drammen road. I bought a meal of rye-bread, coffee cream, and butter from her, and while half my clothes were drying round the stove. I did myself extremely well, and reached Skuldkeröd about dinner-time, having been away twenty-four hours. Probably owing to the pure mountain air, I had not even caught a cold. Oddie and Binar Olsen had eaten all the tucker except one loaf, so we were on short commons the rest of the day, and on the following morning Oddie and I walked back to Drammen about fourteen miles.

I used to be rather cocky about my ability to speak Norwegian. but this conceit received. a rude shock one day in Kristiania, when I went to take a swim in the sea-baths near the fort. The old woman in charge refused me a ticket, and nothing I could say would induce her to let me in. After a bit, a Norwegian who could speak English came along, and from him I learned that the woman, judging by my conversation, thought I was drunk. She had never heard such curiously constructed sentences before. My Norsk, of which I was so proud, was evidently on a par with that of a native the worse for drink; when I said I was an Englishman she gave me a ticket at once.

There is one advantage of being an Englishman on the Continent no one is surprised at anything you do, as they think we are all mad.

Near Kristiania is the home of Fridjiöf Nansen, the Arctic explorer, with whom I had a short conversation. He is a very well-built man with fair hair. Though I myself am a tall man, six foot in my boots, I noticed he was much taller.

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Chapter One New Zealand 1894

Chapter Three Exporting 1896

Chapter Four Argentina & Uruguay

Chapter Five Return To England

Chapter Six Back to New Zealand

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