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THE TOTAK VAND.
285
such a rough-looking fellow as myself could be induced
to pay a trifle. After a preliminary scrutiny, he
accordingly asked me how much I would pay him. I offered
him a mark (the distance is about four or five English
miles), which he accepted eagerly, and with evident
astonishment at the amount.
The scenery on this lake is not remarkable. There
are several farms dotted about the slope of the
mountain forming the shore on which I landed. It is marked
Gaardsfjord on the map. I tried at several houses,
and found them all uninhabited and locked up; but
there were people working in some of the fields, and
they directed me to the best farmhouse of the district.
I arrived there just as the housemen were returning;
and 011 asking them whether I could have a bed, they
told me that the " huusbond" (which, literally
translated, means house-master, and from which, of course,
our word husband is derived) was not yet returned. I
waited accordingly; and in the meantime these
housemen, or farm-labourers, amused themselves with
horse-racing of a remarkably break-neck, steeple-chase
character. They seized the bare-backed horses by the
mane, and throwing themselves upon them commenced
beating, and kicking, and howling at the beasts; which,
evidently accustomed to the sport, and taking as much
interest in it as their riders, started off at a scrambling,
furious gallop over the cultivated patches, the bare
rock, loose stones, and boggy hollows of the mountain
side, up hills or down hills of any inclination,
apparently intent upon breaking their own knees and their
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