securing some game proportionally
augmented. The black bears of Norway are not very dangerous, however,
and, hunted in this manner, it requires no great skill to kill them.
They are generally to be found in the higher mountains and defiles, a
few miles from some farming settlement. In winter, when their
customary food is scarce, they often commit serious depredations upon
the stock of the farmers. Every facility is freely afforded by the
peasants for their destruction, and every bear killed is considered so
many cattle saved.

[Illustration: PEASANT WOMEN AT WORK.]

It was late in the afternoon when I descended a rocky and pine-covered
hill, and came in sight of the station called Djerkin, celebrated as
one of the best in the interior of Norway. This place is kept by an
old Norwegian peasant family of considerable wealth, and is a favorite
resort of English sportsmen bound on fishing and hunting excursions
throughout the wilds of the Dovre Fjeld. The main buildings and
outhouses are numerous and substantial, and stand on the slope of the
hill which forms the highest point of the Fjeld on the road from
Christiania to Trondhjem. The appearance of this isolated group of
buildings on the broad and barren face of the hill had much in it to
remind me of some of the old missionary establishments in California;
and the resemblance was increased by the scattered herds of cattle
browsing upon the parched and barren slopes of the Fjeld, which in
this vicinity are as much like the old ranch lands of San Diego County
as one region of country wholly different in climate can be like
another. A few cultivated patches of ground near the station, upon
which the peasants were at work gathering in the scanty harvest,
showed that even in this rigorous region the attempts at agriculture
were not altogether unsuccessful. As usual, the principal burden of
labor seemed to fall upon the women, who were digging, hoeing, and
raking with a lusty will that would have done credit to the men.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

WOMEN IN NORWAY AND GERMANY.

I must say that of all the customs prevailing in the different parts
of Europe, not excepting the most civilized states of Germany, this
one of making the women do all the heavy work strikes me as the
nearest approximation to the perfection of domestic discipline. The
Diggers of California and the Kaffres of Africa understand this thing
exactly, and no man of any spirit belonging to those tribes woul