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down the rock walls above, and wondrous
farmhouses lodged upon ledges between fearful
precipices for the harvesting of hay patches appearing
no bigger than large tablecloths. The mowers were
at work on some of these in spite of all the rain.
The agricultural machinery, the improved seed,
new manures, &c., &c., displayed at our cattle
shews, have done wonders in developing the
productiveness of the soil; hut all these combined
and many times multiplied are hut impotent
compared with the results obtainable and obtained by
the ancient and simple machinery of peasant
proprietorship. If land were held in Norway as it is
in aristocratic England, the whole region through
which we have passed since leaving Molde would
yield no sustenauce whatever to human beings ; it
would remain a pathless wilderness, still peopled
by its aborigines, the bear, the wolf, and, possibly,
the northern hyena and the hairy Siberian
mammoth. At least three-fourths of the present
cultivated area of all Norway would become deserted
it its tillage were subject to any system of
tenant-at-will serfdom.
This black valley opens out at its upper part
into another of greater width, in the midst of a
labyrinth of wooded hills backed by the snow
mountains of the Jostedal, the largest glacier
u
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