erful abundance during the summer season, dividing the mastership
with that other Norwegian pest, the flea, who is here the
acknowledged giant of his tribe. Hotel accommodations even in Bergen
are nothing to boast of. Every foreigner is supposed to be craving
for salmon and reindeer meat, raw, smoked, pickled, or cooked.

A drive of a few leagues inland upon the charming roads in any
direction will fill the stranger with delight, and afford
characteristic pictures of great beauty. The farmers hang their cut
grass upon frames of wood to dry, as we do clothes on washing-day.
These frames are arranged in the mowing-fields in rows of a hundred
feet in length, and are about five feet high. The effect in the
haying season is quite striking and novel to the stranger. The
agricultural tools used upon the farms are of the most primitive
character; the ploughs are single-handed, and as awkward as the rude
implement in use to-day in Egypt. The country houses are low, the
roofs often covered with soil, and not infrequently rendered
attractive with blooming heather and little blue-and-pink blossoms
planted by Nature's hand,--the hieroglyphics in which she writes her
impromptu poetry. In the meadows between the hills are sprinkled
harebells as blue as the azure veins on a lovely face; while here and
there patches of great red clover-heads are seen nodding heavily
with their wealth of golden sweets. Farther away in solitary glens
white anemones delight the eye, in company with ferns of tropical
variety of form and color. The blossoms of the multebaer, almost
identical with that of the strawberry, are also abundant. The
humidity of the atmosphere of the west coast, and especially in the
latitude of Bergen, favors floral development. All through
Scandinavia one meets these bright mosaics of the soil with a sense
of surprise, they are so delicate, so frail, creations of such short
life, yet lovely beyond compare, born upon the very verge of eternal
frost. How Nature enters into our hearts and confides her amorous
scents through winsome flowers! In these rambles afield one meets
occasionally a peasant, who bows low, removing his hat as the
stranger passes. Without showing the servility of the common people
of Japan, they yet exhibit all their native courtesy. Now and again
the road passes through reaches of pine forest, still and aromatic,
the soil carpeted with soft yellow fir-needles, where if one pauses
to listen there comes a low, un