NORWAY IN JUNE.* " Juxu," Mrs. Stone tells us, in

her preface, "is the month in which to visit Norway. The extreme hot weather of the summer has not yet arrived ; the rivers arc fall of water, from the snow melting on the mountains ; the waterfalls are in perfection ; and the mosquitoes are comparatively quiet." With so pleasant, comprehensive, and instructive a guide-book as the author supplies to back up her advite and record her experience, her readers will probably follow her example in considerable numbers, and "try Norway," even though they do not want to go there for fishing or shooting. Mrs. Stone's fresh and charming book has two of the first requisites for the enjoyment of a narrative of travel; she does not journalise, and her impressions are her own. It is always easy to detect in books of this kind whether the writer looks at places and things to discover whether they are like what so-and.-so has said of them, or whether he or she 'brings lively perception and good-humoured interest to bear upon the objects of survey. The author of Norway in, Tune is of the order of happy travellers, and also of the order of the sincere ; she never grumbles, neither does she gush ; she sees

* Norway in Jane. By Olivia M. Stone. London : Marcus Ward and O.

and observes ; she admires and compares ; she has a lively fancy and a sympathetic temper, and she has given us a vivid and spirited account of a thoroughly enviable holiday tour. Mrs. Stone cannot conscientiously praise the Albano,' in which she made the voyage from London to Christiania, but she has much to say of the pleasantness of the captain and the weather, and the delightful holiday feeling that smooths over every incon- venience. This feeling pervades the whole book, and it is quite unforced.

The pilot service in the Christiania Fjord must be a rough one, to judge by the following :—

"The fee paid to a pilot for each ship he conducts to Christiania is about £6. This is not much, when one considers that he frequently lies out in the offing for days, and even weeks, together, through fair

weather and foul, without meeting a vessel in need of pilotage When the sea is very high, it is impossible for a small boat, such as the pilot cutters are, to get sufficiently near a steamer to allow of the side being scaled. Under these circumstances, the pilot is taken on board in what seems to the uninitiated a perilous manner. As the cutter sweeps by alongside, a line is thrown from the deck of the steamer, and this, perhaps after several failures, the pilot catches. Then, fastening the rope securely round his body under the arms, be jumps into tho sea, and is hauled through the surging waves upon deck."

A man-overboard kind of life like this is certainly not over- paid at 26 per header.

That Christiania is pretty, with its dazzling white houses, it greenery, and its sunshine, all travellers affirm ; but there is also a general consent as to the plainness (to put it mildly) of the inhabitants, who are probably the worst-dressed people in Europe. Male travellers tell us this in generalities, but Mrs. Stone gives us the reasons why in a very amusing passage, which indicates her keen observation. She beheld the celebra- tion of Whit Monday by the elated but perfectly sober popula- tion, and found it difficult to realise the slow and phlegmatic Norwegians dancing to fiddles and playing at "kiss in the ring." They are a very honest people, as all visitors to their country admit, and the inconvenient, but indispensable, money-bag in which the abominable coins in currency must be carried (that bag "which is the bane of one's existence, for one never knows where to keep it ; no pocket would stand the weight, and it cannot be packed away, as it is constantly required t') is quite safe from theft or pilfering. Against one temptation only the honesty of the Norwegian peasant is weak, —he has a hankering after the straps that attach luggage to the convenient but unsociable carriole.

A very interesting chapter is devoted to the Viking Ship, or Ship of the Creek Men, which was discovered at Sandefjord in 1880, and placed in the University of Christiania. As this Viking ship is much talked of just now, a propos of Lady Brassey's Scandinavian craft, Mrs. Stone's account of the galley, illustrated by drawings from Mr. Harris Stone's admirable photo-

graphs, come at an excellent moment. "We expected," says Mrs. Stone, "to see an old galley-ship—in fact, the oldest ship in tho world, probably—and instead of an antiquated, rudely con- structed, and roughly-finished vessel, with primitively-drawn lines, we found, to our astonishment, a smart, trim-looking craft, built on what a sailor would call beautiful lines,' and admirably adapted as well for speed as for general seaworthiness." The

Viking ship is supposed to be 1,000 years old; she carried thirty-two oars, and was found at Gokstad, about half-a-mile from the sea, in a mound of "blue" clay, on land belonging to a

widow, whose sons, seafaring men, dug up the mound, on the strength of a popular tradition that it contained a treasure. The galley is one of the sepulchral ships of the Vikings, but it had been entered and plundered at some far earlier date, for none of the Viking's arms were found in the sepulchral chamber, and only a few of his bones :—

"There were also found the bones and feathers of a peacock, perhaps brought home from a foreign expedition, and the bones of a little dog, as well as some fish.hooks, and several bronze and lead mountings to belts and harness. Round about the ship were dis- covered the bones of some nine or ten horses and dogs, which had probably been sacrificed at the time of the burial. The vessel itself is 77 ft. 11 in. in length between the rabbets at gunwale. She is the largest vessel that has boon found belonging to the early iron age."

All who have seen the Bayeux tapestry can picture to them- selves the Viking galley.

At Lillehe,mmer, after a pleasant steamboat voyage on Lake Mjosen, remarkable for its immense.depth, the travellers began their carriole journey, in single file; and they enjoyed the funny vehicles, with their sturdy ponies, as all English people do. Foreigners of other nations seem to regard

them with horror. All animals are well treated in Nor- way, and. all animals are gentle, tame and intelligent, the horses especially. Mrs. Stone tells us that when Norwegian horses are shipped direct to England, they nearly always deteri- orate, few survive two seasons ; but they can be successfully acclimatised in Ireland, whither they are shipped to the bays of County Antrim, and where they are known as " Cushen- Ilan ponies," from the famous fair held at Cushendall in August :—

"The small sailing-vessels run in close to the beach, and the horses are sent overboard, when they swim ashore, Their respective owners having previously branded them, they are turned loose upon the mountains, where they remain for two, three, or four years.. Some- times the Cushendall ponies are a mixed race, the original stock having come, many generations back, from Norway. There arc none so hardy, docile, and sure-footed as ponies of this kind."

The author's description of the Gulbrandsdal is very interest- ing; nothing escapes her observation, from the most striking

features of Nature, the farms and methods of cultivation, to the minutiae of the " interiors " and the manners of the pigs,—in- telligent animals, with a keen enjoyment of " racing " the 4',canioler " (plural of " carriole "). A seventy miles' drive, with seven relays of horses, in one day, was a fatiguing first experi-

ence for a lady ; but fjord steamers are scarce, and the travellers had to catch one at the foot of the Romsdal Valley. It is plea- sant to follow them with book and map, for we see everything, —.the white-blossoming trees, the peasant women, in national tostume, who knit as they walk, using an apparatus made by themselves and not to be purchased ; the goats following the women, the horses crossing rivers on fiat-bottomed boats ; a thousand objects, set off by the wonderful clearness of the atmosphere. We have space for only one little picture ; the reader will find many a pendant to it in this delightful book :—

"Things really distant appear quite close, so that one can see, for instance, the movements of a man or horse distinctly, and at the same time hear no sound. A weird feeling takes possession of one, when all around are signs of life, and yet the stillness is death-like. The present scene (Bredevangon) was one of great beauty; the majestic grey mountains, their outlines carved against the cloudless blue sky ; the vivid greensward, so closely embraced by the still waters, that it was well nigh impossible to tell where the reality ended and the reflection began; the motionless horses, standing with drooping beads, se the barge slowly wended its way across the calm lake, nought breaking the stillness save the regular and distant thud of the oars in the rowlocks, and the tinkle of the bells on the cows, goats, and sheep scattered on the surrounding bills. As the keel of the boat grated on the pebbles immediately below us, the horses roused them- selves, and slowly and leisurely stepped out, as they had entered some minutes before on the opposite shore. The whole scene stands out with vivid distinctness, from amongst the many glorious pictures in that land of beauty."

Of the famous Romsdal Valley, Mrs. Stone gives us a glowing description, and this portion of her tour is illustrated by some beautiful views. The narrow gorge that is shut in by the two mountains, Romsdalhorn and Troltinderne, must be a scene never to be forgotten, and one:emerges from it upon a lovely plain, smiling in the sunshine, with the greenest of grass en- tirely covering it, and the smoothest of rivers winding silently along. The travellers had some difficulties ; daylight lasting all night was troublesome for photographic purposes, but they fought the intruder with eider-down quilts, and macintoshes—very much as Dick Swiveller played the flute. Beds in Norway are simply wooden boxes, with the sides lower than the ends, in them " a good stretch" is not to be had ; this is certainly a trial after long carriole journeys, but the difficulties and troubles are far out- weighed by the facilities and the pleasures of the tour. There is, perhaps, a little sameness in the food, although it takes one some time to tire of trout and ptarmigan. The fjords are charmingly described ; the water-ways, the lakes, and the cascades have evidently a supreme attraction for the writer; and also the deep solitudes, with their bird and insect inhabit- ants, and the profuse wild-flowers, on which she dwells with de- light. Studying nature and the people closely, the travellers trammed a great deal into a short time ; but their joint record is not stuffy or overladen. In the towns they saw everything, courts of justice and schools included ; they attended four weddings at Vik (chapter xv.), and the chapter describing the place, the people, and the ceremonies is, perhaps, the most amusing in the book ; they attended a funeral at Bergen, and recognised the chants which are performed at Ophelia's funeral at the Lyceum Theatre. The Sogne fjord, for wildness almost subhme, the Hardanger fjord, for minute, fertile beauty, rest in

their memory. At Bergen they saw the celebration of Mid- summer night (St. John's Feast, it is called in Ireland, where it is still observed), a most picturesque spectacle. All the people, better looking, better dressed, and livelier than those of Christ- iania, were out in holiday attire; in the harbour, the boats and steamers were all dressed, and numbers of lights hung from the rigging. "There are," says the author, "a few, little, flat, rocky islets in the haven, and on these bonfires were lighted, while the boats of the revellers glided in and out among them. Several bands were playing on the larger vessels. The scene was one of great beauty." All about Bergen, the old town and the new, may be learned from Mrs. Stone. She liked the place, its people, its products, its leisurely ways, and was interested even in the jelly-fish, with which the harbour seems alive. We cannot follow the travellers in their voyage on the beautiful Hardanger Fjord, or in their journey through the Laerdal Valley ; their readers will find a succession of bright and charming pictures of the water-way, the gorges, the villages, and the pine woods, on which the author dwells lovingly ; but we must point attention to the remarkable description and drawing of Borgund Church, one of the two remains of ancient public buildings left in Norway. The building is not at all like any other picture of it which we have seen, and this is explained by the fact that the pagoda-like, wooden church, "which has been so repeatedly painted with pitch, that it looks much as if made of old-fashioned ginger-bread," instead of being the big structure one imagines it, "is exceedingly small, looking as if intended for a Liliputian congregation."

The practical value of Mrs. Stone's book is twofold. The intending tourist in Norway will dud it most useful, because it tells him all there is to see, and how to see it, without the cut- and-dryness that takes the flavour out of travel ; it will guide without dictating to him, and suggest, without bothering him. It leaves no point of interest untouched ; the artist, as well as the sportsman and the naturalist, will find his taste consulted, his curiosity satisfied ; and the minutest instructions as to the means, routes, and expenses of travelling, outfit, time, and regulations are set down in plain and intelligible form. To the stay-at-home traveller, its interest is equally great, for it gives him a thorough knowledge of a country which has generally been treated either too scientifically for the general reader's taste, or too much in the summer-play-ground. style. The concluding chapters, in which the author treats of the institutions of the country, of education, agriculture, peasant-proprietorship, and especially of the advantages offered by Norway to immigrants from Great Britain (a totally new idea to us), are of serious and vivid interest. A word of recognition is due to the literary merits of the book,—it is abundantly illus- trated by Mr. Boot, Mr. Kent Thomas, and other artists,—and we must congratulate Mrs. Stone on the taste and appropriate- ness of her chapter-headings. Oddly enough, they introduce us to some really fine passages from Gilfillan, that unlucky poet of whom Macaulay said. that he was not content to walk on the top of Mount Parnassus, but he must do it on stilts.