ROSS'S YACHT VOYAGE TO NORWAY.
IN the spring of 1847, Mr. W. A. Ross was invited by Lord Rodney to accompany him on a yacht voyage to the North of Europe. Mr. R. had contemplated a London season, but he yielded to the attractions of the lord, the yacht, and old Scandinavia. With the particularity of Hume describing the departure of Columbus on his first voyage, Mr. Ross tells his readers, that "at three o'clock on the boisterous afternoon of the 1st of May 1847, I left Greenwich with my friend Lord R—, in his yacht." At Sheerness, they put ashore a couple of friends, who ought to have been landed at Gravesend, but seem to have been carried on tor a "lark." At Yarmouth, they completed their stores. They arrived at Christianund on the 10th of May, without any nautical incidents worth recording,— except the fright of a Norwegian fishing-boat which mistook Lord Rod- ney's "Iris" for a pirate, and the sea-sickness that overtook Mr. Ross in the cabin. One object of Lord Rodney's expedition was salmon-fishing; but they were too early : the salmon were not expected to ascend the rivers from the sea for several weeks, on account of the coldness of the water. After assisting a Norwegian to shoot a bear, which had been enticed within shot-range by means of a dead horse, the party steered for Elsineur and Copenhagen. They then sailed for Sweden; and landed at Falconberg and Gottenhurg; trying the streams, but without much success, as Mr. Ross, not being himself an angler, thus candidly admits. " The following morning' as soon as it was light, we went to fish in a river near the town; but encountered the same good fortune of which we had hitherto made no complaint, considering that the mere sport of angling for salmon had brought us to Scandinavia, and up to the present moment we had not seen the scaly snout of a single fish. We murmured not; but could not resist the doubt that the existence of salmon in Northern Europe was a reality; nor could we conceal from ourselves the absurd light in which we appeared to the simple people, who each day, with mute astonishment, a beheld us late and early, in storm and calm delibe- rately and untiringly flog with a long line of catgut their legendary streams, in the vain hope of capturing a creature not to be caught in them; and which effort on our part was, in their opinion, a striking proof of the aberration of human in- telligence. 4'e had now travelled over a space of more than a thousand miles, and were as far removed from the object ot which we came in pursuit as the first hoar when we left Greenwich; and yet our diligence had been exemplary, our inquiries most minute, and our measures in carrying out the information we received most prompt."
Returning to Norway, the trio (a Mr. 1"-- making the third) amused themselves by sailing between Christiansand and Bergen, entering any fiords that promised sport or pleasure. In these singular arms of the sea they would leave their yacht, and ascend further in her boat or by land ; sometimes they fished for salmon occasionally with better success than at first ; once they shot a number of gulls and a seal; and they made several land-trips. They also went on an excursion to the North of Bergen in search of reindeer, another great object of their voyage. After a tremendous tramp for nearly a day and a night, during which they heard the howling of wolves, but did not get a shot at one, or indeed appear to seek it, their eyes were blessed by the sight of a doe and her fawn, through the skill of a Norwegian yeoman or gentle- man, who., though quite unknown to them, volunteered to accompany them. Through the attention of the same individual they were able to examine several reindeer, that were dragged down for them to look at, and then slanghtered in this fashion.
" When we landed, the first object that drew our attention from everything else was a buck, whose height and proportions quite astonished us. This animal measured from the tail to the nose five feet two inches, and from the hoof of the fore-leg to the top of his horns, when he held his head up, seven feet three inches; and his body was quite as large as that of an ass. Although very much injured by the violence with which he had been used during his long journey from the mountains, and which had been rendered absolutely necessary, by his ferocity and 'wildness, we were desirous of bringing him alive to England; but being so mu- tilated, our guide recommended us to have the buck slaughtered, and take a doe and her fawn on board. With great-reluctance the death of the buck was agreed to by R—; and this splendid animal was dragged, to a field close at hand. The strength and turbulence of the buck are beyond description; but I do not think I ever enjoyed any fiendish sight more than this short struggle between him and his murderers over twenty yards of ground. None but men like the Norwegians, accustomed to these savage animals, could have controlled the deer in any way; but notwithstanding all their caution, I saw the buck kick one man on the chest, and throw him, exactly like a nine-pin, over and over, some few feet along the beach. The manner by which the Norwegians had secured this power- ful animal was so ingenious, that he could by no means do much mischief, ex- cept to those persons who, bolder than the rest, went near to caress him; for three ropes were bound round the root of the horns, and, being five or six feet in length, were held by three men, who stood in the form of an angle, the head of the deer forming the base; or in other words, one man stood on the left side of the buck in a line with his left shoulder, a second man stood on the right side op- posite to the right shoulder, while the third man took his station in front; and the three men were careful that the rope in the custody of each of them should be kept tight, since the peril of its being slack must be as obvious as its contrariety of tension; for whenever the animal made a plunge, as he sometimes did, towards the man on his right side, the Norwegian on the left could immediately check the career of the maddened deer by 'holding on his end,' as sailors say; the man in front at the same time giving his protection and being protected in his torn. "The facility with which this buck was fed seemed surprising; for the animal had not only his natural ferocity to offer against the skill of his antagonists, but he possessed strength and all the madness born of the human sounds to which he had been unaccustomed,—the loud ribaldry and laughter of men and women, the whistle and shrill cries of boys and frighted infants. Submitting to my ig- norance, I must say that I had never seen any large animal killed, and did not know how the operation was performed; and, with a feeling of the most horrible infatuation, I gathered in the small group round the animal to learn the stratagems observed to surround his legs with looped ropes, which, being drawn quickly, slipped into knots and tripped him up. When the proud deer fell to the ground, a man, drawing a knife from his pocket, and unclasping it, thrust the' blade up to the hilt into the skull between the horns. I could not have conceived anything deprived of life so suddenly; and were it not for the blood that flowed in warm and copious streams from the mouth and nostrils, the animal appeared to have been dead a week. Another buck was killed, and made a present by R— to his crew. The doe and the fawn were with great difficulty put on board."
As sport was the first object of Lord Rodney and his friend P ' , the three-months voyage may be pronounced a failure in reference to its end. Nearly a month was lost through the absence of the fish; when the weather was sufficiently genial, their best day's " catch " does not ap- pear to be much to boast of in comparison with the deeds of other anglers ; the bear was shot by a combination of accident and trick; the reader has been in at the death of the reindeer ; the gull and seal- shooting was, we reckon, their best day's sport ; and that was owing to casual opportunity, arising from the plenty of the animals and the failttie of the party in catching salmon. As Mr. Ross could take his part in this affair, he describes it with more vivacity.
"Our sell-hunts, however, were most entertaining, and the excitement relaxed not for an instant. The seal dives as soon as it is fired as.ler alarmed; but can- not remain for a prolonged period under weter, nature niat4 it compulsory that the animal should ascend to the surface for respiration. 11.1;ing selected a par- ticular seal, that appeared nearly as large as a sheep, we were determined by dint of perseverance to hunt it down. We divided our force in such a manner, that rise where the animal would one of us must immediately see it; for took the starboard side of the gig, P.— went to port, and I stood at .the stern, while the two sailors, one being a crack shot, kept watch ahead. None of us spoke; for the seal is as quick of hearing as of sight, and timid to aproverb; but it was arranged that whoever saw it first was to fire. We kept the boat broadside on, that is to say, her bow and stern faced either shore; and her two sides swept, up and down, the entire length of the fiord. Regardless of myriads of gulls that flew close round our heads, screaming angrily, we abated not in at- tention to the water;; and watched with straining eyes for the score of bubbles that usually precede the rising of a seal; and the water being brilliant and smooth as a looking-glass, they could not escape notice. "Up came a sleek head, not twenty yards from me; and down it went again, just in time before my rifle-ball struck the eddying water; and at the same instant
both barrels of R—'s gun, discharged one after another, made the drum of
1113;67.14wriongoi them,' be murmured. P— and the sailor fired almost im- mediately; but the seals were too quick for them. As fast as we could load, these creatures kept rising around us; and they only seemed to dive in order to spread the tidings below amongst their friends, for they increased in numbers at each emersion."
After "firing a great quantity of ahot and powder to little purpose," they hit, and thought they killed, one; but he never rose. Eventually, they caught a seal asleep, and seem to have hit him in that condition. " Keep the boat broadside on,' observed R — to the cockswain. "R— had scarcely spoken when the water bubbled a little, and the seal's black snout, with dilating nostrils, rose close wider the gig's gunwale. The wa- ter whirled in eddies; and his tail, as he turned, appearing slightly above the sur- face, showed me that the seal had seen us, and dived again. " He must come up in a minute; so, look out,' whispered P—; and the trig- gers of both barrels of his gun clicked as he breathed the fact and admonition. Fortunately the day was very calm, and the least disturbance, the fall of the thistle's down, marred the bright surface of the fiord. "The head of the luckless seal soon peeped slowly up, a short way astern of the boat; and before his eyes had risen above the water to take a horizontal glance at us, P— sent a handful or so of small shot into his nose. Down popped the little dark proboscis speedily as thought. "'He hadn't much fresh air then,' said R—, laughing at the promptitude with which P— saluted the appearance of the unfortunate seal. "'No; that's the way to do it,' answered P—, smiling. Then, turning to the sailors, he said, Back astern.' "The boat was accordingly backed, and so silently, that only the silvery sound of the water as it fell drop by drop from the oars contended with the natural trickling of the ripples as they murmured under the ledges of rock. "Mere he comes,' whispered R—, close on our quarter.'
"The seal rose, like a cork, up to its fore-fins as if it had suffered much tor- ture from long retention of its -breath; and, swifter than thought, R—'s gun flashed, and with a sharp report seemed to take a bucket of water from the fiord and fling it into the air. When the light gray smoke of the powder had rolled in a revolving cloud from the space intervening between us and the spot where the animal was observed, the water was white with froth, but no sign of the seal could be seen.
'"By Jove that's odd. I thought I had killed hiinto a certainty,' said R—, somewhat surprised. "Yea, my Lord, you hit him,' observed the cockswain consolingly. saw him reel over to port.'
" That's all right,' said P—; 'in that case he is done.'
"Once more two large bubbles, the spiteful heralds of the seal's advent, rose to the top of the water, and then burst with a slight sound. "The purple dye of blood tinged the water; and immediately afterwards the wounded seal, with lacerated fin, buoyed itself sluggishly to sight. Its heavy breathing, expressive of pain, could be heard by all of us in the boat; and, level- ling both their pieces, R— and P— fired together. The seal rolled over with a moan, not unlike the faint lowing of a calf, and, floating in a pool of blood, rather than water, expired without a struggle. Rowing the boat to the spot, the cockswain and his messmate used their whole strength to pull the amme on board, its dimensions not being contemptible. We reached the yacht about mid- night, proud of our day a sport."
The literary narrative of the voyage is not much more successful than the deeds it commemorates. Mr. Ross seems to have a singular mixture of the literal and the fanciful in his genius ; he has not improved nature by means of art, and his taste is none of the most refined. From these causes, a great portion of his book is both flat and coarse. He reports the dialogues of his friends with each other, himself, or the seamen, in a style as spiritless as a penny-a-liner ; stripping the discourse of such vitality as it might originally possess, and such excuse for it as might be found on the occasion, and leaving little behind but a vapid grossness. Occasionally he varies his narrative with a legend, or tries to elevate some incident that occurred to himself into a tale; but the first are well known, and the last possess a mawkish unreality. He is so unacquainted with what has been written about Norway, that the form and construc- tion of a carriole is surprising to him ; so indifferent or unobserving, that he does not mark the changing vegetation in a mountain ascent till he gets beyond it and finds nothing but the bare rock. He is so loose- speaking about contemporary history, that he tells us, (Vol. I. page 110,) Nelson bombarded Copenhagen in 1807; though the hero was killed at Trafalgar in 1805. Like many other people he confounds Nelson's at- tack upon the floating batteries of Copenhagen in 1801—which was an assault, open, expected, and prepared for, our Ambassador having left Copenhagen a fortnight before, on the refusal of his demands—with the questionable not to say disgraceful bombardment of the city in 1807, by the expedition under Lord Cathcart and Admiral Gambier. We sus- pect, too, that what with his indifferent acquirements as a linguist, and what with the preconceptions of his own mistake, he attributes to the Danes a soreness about Nelson which they do not feel, and possibly in- serts the Admiral's name when they were silent about him. We believe the Danes rather like the reminiscence of the attack of 1801, on account of their gallant resistance to the hero of the Nile: at all events, neither Mr. Ross nor Lord Rodney need "regret" the "battle of the Baltic," however much they may feel ashamed of the bombardment of Copenhagen by Admiral Gambier and Lord Cathcart.
The bulk of the book is poor, flimsy, and frequently coarse ; but there are occasionally better things. Mr. Ross can describe scenery well enough, when the subject is striking in itself and he allows Nature fair play, contenting himself to tell what he sees without aiming at fine writing. He gives a tolerable account of some of the sights of Copen- hagen, and occasionally he can narrate an occurrence without spoiling it. There appears to have been at bottom a good deal of rugged kindness and consideration amongst the party, especially in Lord Rodney ; but it requires some distinct evidence to bring it out,—as the beating up through great dangers to get to Bergen, that a sick sailor might have medical attendance, and remaining there till he was pronounced con- valescent. As a whole, however, the publication of the Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, is a mistake, either as regards the public interest in such a book, the value of the book itself, or the light in which the author contrives to place the voyagers.
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