to be sold. It will serve also to describe the usual accommodations and buildings on such small estates in this country.

"A two-story dwelling-house, with seven apartments, of which two are painted. A large kitchen, hall, and room for hanging clothes, and two cellars. There is a side building of one story, containing servants' room, brewing kitchen, calender room, chaise-house, and wood-house. A two-story house on pillars with a pantry, and store-room. The farm buildings consist of a thrashing barn, and barns for hay, straw, and chaff; a stable for five horses; a cattle house for eight cows, with divisions for calves and sheep. There is a good kitchen garden, and a good fishery; and also a considerable wood, supplying timber for house-building, for fences, and for fuel, besides the right of cutting wood in the common forest. The scater or hill pasture is only half a mile (that is, three and a half English miles) from the farm. The arable land extends to the sowing of eight barrels of grain and twenty-five or thirty of potatoes (the barrel is half a quarter), besides the land for hay; and the farm can keep within itself, summer and winter, two horses, eight cows, and forty sheep and goats. There is also a houseman's farm and houses. It keeps two cows, six sheep, and has arable land to the sowing of one and a half barrels of grain and six barrels of potatoes. The property adjoins a good high road, is within four miles (eight and twenty English miles) of Christiania."-It is offered in the advertisement at the price of 4000 dollars. This is

probably one-third more than the usual price of such properties, as the district about Christiania is more favourably situated for markets, and land sells considerably dearer, than in other parts of Norway. The amount of taxes, general and local, including tithe and poor-rate, would probably be for such a property not less than twenty-five dollars.

This class of emigrants should never forget that there are three different sorts of value in foreign money, in all that regards their concerns and situations. One is its mercantile value in exchange, as compared with our own currency; another is its value in exchange for corn, labour, house rent, fuel, or other necessaries or luxuries in the country of which it is the currency; a third is its value in society, arising from its distribution in small or great portions. Among penniless people the man with a sovereign in his pocket is rich. In a country in which property is distributed generally among the inhabitants, and there are not the extremes of very enormous accumulations of wealth and of excessive destitution and want close to each other, the medium point of the fortunes of individuals is low; and a very little above that point is a state of comparative affluence. The emigrant family should endeavour to understand and enter into this conventional value of money in the country in which they settle, as well as its exchangeable and economical value. When a few hundred dollars are the amount of the ordinary incomes of the families of the first society, a few dollars more are of great

relative importance; and the dollar is in this point of view altogether equivalent to the pound sterling with us. The emigrant should learn so to consider and value it in his expenditure, and should rub out of his recollection altogether that this dollar, which is of so much weight in social use and estimation, cost him only one-fifth of a pound sterling.

Climate, or the ordinary course of summer and winter weather, has much influence on the emigrant's comfort. In Norway the weather is in general more steady than in Britain; it is either good or bad for considerable periods. The western part, especially about Bergen and along the coast, is proverbially rainy, owing to the high mountains which collect the clouds driven from the sea.

But the country behind this barrier is on that account particularly dry, perhaps rather too much so. The summer is delightful. In the sunny narrow glens it is too warm at noontide, and the air too thickly peopled with flies, midges, mosquitoes, and all those bloodthirsty enemies of human quietude; but the evening and midnight hours are delightful, and peculiar to Norway. The sun is below the horizon for so short a time that the sky retains the glow, and the air the warmth and dryness, which are grateful to the eye and to the feelings. The damp raw chill which generally pervades the air even of our midsummer midnights is not felt in the interior of Norway, where one may be out of doors all night with delight. Winter too is pleasant. The air is cold; but it is a dry, sound, exhilarating cold, which in

vigorates even the fireside man, and entices him to long walks and brisk exercise. It is not the damp, raw, shivering, nose-reddening cold of our sea air, which makes even the healthy draw to the chimney-corner. The in-door climate in winter is also excellent. The rooms are so large as to be in general well aired, and so equally warmed by the stoves that one feels comfortable in any corner; and the log upon log make such tight dry walls that currents and dranghts of wind and damp are never felt. The disagreeable season in this climate is spring, the transition from winter to summer,— that is, in April and May. One feels then the soft genial breath of spring, the sun shines bright and warm, the lark is in the sky; but all the earth is white, and the eye is tired of white, and seeks in vain for the soft tender green which the feel of the air promises. The jingle of the sledge bells, so cheerful in a dark winter day, does not at all harmonize with the song of the lark in a glittering sunshine. The snow too is painfully bright to the eyes under an April sun. Where it melts vegetation bursts forth at once; turesque appearance of the country, with a knob of rock here and a corner of a field there appearing through the white covering, deprives us of the pleasing impressions of an English spring. The rapid advance of vegetation is more astonishing than pleasing. It is not agreeable to step thus at once from dead winter to living summer, and to lose the charm and interest of the gradual revival of all that has leaf or wing.

but the patchy unpic

CHAPTER VIII.

FISHING IN NORWAY.-HIRE A FARM.-DESCRIPTION.-ANCIENT FRESH-WATER LAKES. MIDGRUNDEN GAARD. — FARMING. RENT.-ASIATIC ORIGIN OF SCANDINAVIANS.-LAPLANDERS, CELTIC.-USE OF HORSE FLESH.-HEREDITARY ATTACHMENT TO THE HORSE.-BERSERKER. PECULIAR INTOXICATION.-DOMESTIC SERVANTS IN AMERICA-IN NORWAY.-HOUSEKEEPERS IN FAMILIES.-PROVISIONS.-CAPERCAILZIE.-PTARMIGAN JER

PER.-BEAR-SHOOTING.-HYBERNATION OF ANIMALS.-CONDITION OF BONDER CLASS.-EQUALITY OF MANNERS.-EXCURSION TO SNASEN-VAND. ANCIENT SEA BEACH ABOVE THE PRESENT LEVEL OF THE SEA.-EXCURSION THROUGH THE FJELDE.-BARK BREAD.-VÆRA LAKE.-SHJÆKKERHATTE.-BIVOUAC.-SHJÆKKER VALLEY.-TREES AT VARIOUS ELEVATIONS ABOVE The sea. -FURU.-GRAN.-BIRCH.

June, 1835.-I passed an agreeable winter in the district of Skogn. I have not perhaps conveyed an adequate idea of the simplicity and good taste conspicuous in the way of living, and of the amiable manners of the upper classes, the country gentry, the public functionaries, and families of condition. It is difficult to do so without entering into detail, which, although honourable to their hospitable and kind spirit, would be violating the sanctity of that private unostentatious rational life which they lead. The winter was remarkable, though not for cold, yet for the quantity of snow which had fallen at a late period. In many parts of the Fjelde it was twenty feet deep. The torrents and rivers were rushing silent and brimful,