geese, are here birds of passage.

LETTER XIII.

I left Tonsberg yesterday, the 22nd of August. It is only twelve or
thirteen English miles to Moss, through a country less wild than any
tract I had hitherto passed over in Norway. It was often beautiful, but
seldom afforded those grand views which fill rather than soothe the mind.

We glided along the meadows and through the woods, with sunbeams playing
around us; and, though no castles adorned the prospects, a greater number
of comfortable farms met my eyes during this ride than I have ever seen,
in the same space, even in the most cultivated part of England; and the
very appearance of the cottages of the labourers sprinkled amidst them
excluded all those gloomy ideas inspired by the contemplation of poverty.

The hay was still bringing in, for one harvest in Norway treads on the
heels of the other. The woods were more variegated, interspersed with
shrubs. We no longer passed through forests of vast pines stretching
along with savage magnificence. Forests that only exhibited the slow
decay of time or the devastation produced by warring elements. No; oaks,
ashes, beech, and all the light and graceful tenants of our woods here
sported luxuriantly. I had not observed many oaks before, for the
greater part of the oak-planks, I am informed, come from the westward.

In France the farmers generally live in villages, which is a great
disadvantage to the country; but the Norwegian farmers, always owning
their farms or being tenants for life, reside in the midst of them,
allowing some labourers a dwelling rent free, who have a little land
appertaining to the cottage, not only for a garden, but for crops of
different kinds, such as rye, oats, buck-wheat, hemp, flax, beans,
potatoes, and hay, which are sown in strips about it, reminding a
stranger of the first attempts at culture, when every family was obliged
to be an independent community.

These cottagers work at a certain price (tenpence per day) for the
farmers on whose ground they live, and they have spare time enough to
cultivate their own land and lay in a store of fish for the winter. The
wives and daughters spin and the husbands and sons weave, so that they
may fairly be reckoned independent, having also a little money in hand to
buy coffee, brandy and some other superfluities.

The only thing I disliked was the military service, which trammels them
more than I at first imagined. It is true that the