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TRAVELS OF EHRENMALM. 355
the land is interfected, furnifh a fufficient quantity of fifth to feed the inhabitants,
and to fell to ftrangers. ;
A rich colony may poffefs twelve or fifteen cows, with their calves, fheep, a horle,
and goats. ‘The hay of this province is fo nourifhing, that the cows yield an abundance
of milk three timesa day. Each cow affords two pounds of butter, as good as that of
Helfingheland, which is the beft that is eaten in Sweden, and perhaps it is fuperior to
that of Holland.
This butter is an obje& of commerce, and conftitutes with cheefe, dried fith, birds,
and fome furs, all the wealth of the country. Thefe provifions ferve to procure in ex-
change corn, falt, tobacco, and other objects of confumption.
The peafants are not much of cultivators: the whole fowing of the year only amounts
to three cafks of barley and rye. The men and women till the lands, and gather in the
crops in all Nordland, ‘Their fcythes equally ferve to cut the hay and corn. ‘They
mow the grafs very fhort and clofe to the ground ; but this labour is flow, and they lole
in time what they gain in hay. When they employ this fcythe to cut the corn, they
fix a bow to it, which ferves to collect the ears together, and to [pread them as they
mow. But a fingle night has often cropped the whole; and when the colonift rifes in
the morning he finds the grafs withered, the corn-ears blemifhed, his libour loft, and
his hopes deftroyed by the froft, in the middle of fummer.
It is difficult to determine the caufe of thefe accidents.. The hich latitude, and the
neighbourhood of the frozen zone, do not alone produce this extraordinary cold. Vhe
Alps and the mountains of Sweden, though much nearer the tropic, have [now all tle
year. Holland, though farther north than Swiflerland, is yet lefs cold. Even in Nordland
there are found, in the mid{t of the mountains, two parifhes, called Nordlian and Sudlian,
in which rye and barley are fown, which never freeze. In certain diltricts a field is
frozen by the eaft wind. while that wind does not produce the fame effect elfewhere:
another field freezes with a welt wind, which does not aflet the furrounding fields ;
another freezes by the fouth wind ; another, in fine, by the north wind. Thefe fudden
and unforefeen frofts happen from the end of July to the beginning of Augutlt, the hotteft
part of the year. ‘The cold nights of the fummer are accompanied with ice, which foon
melts, becaufe the fun only quits the horizon for a fhot time,and does not delay to warm it.
Among the reafons afligned for thefe pernicious phenomena, the peafants, who com-
plain of them,attribute them to the fogs which arife from the marfhes with which the fields
are furrounded. As thefe vapours are not attraéted by the courfe of any water, they
fall again about the marfhes which have exhaled them; but this caufe, which may aug-
ment the cold, does not produce it. - Near Solett is obferved a field which often freezes +
while the neighbouring fields, which are furrounded with marfhes, do not experience
the fame misfortune. The corn of Hellan is never frozen, though the lands there are
full of marfhes.. ‘That of Gaffele and Nore are often frozen, though near to a river
which may attract in its courfe the fogs of the marfhes through which it traverles, :
The fog arifing from rivers and riyulets generally fecures the corn from froft.. They
do not experience this difafter during the cloudy nights; yet we fometimes fee a field
fituated on the bank of a river freeze fooner than another. ‘Thefe frofts might be at-
tributed to the north wird, if in certain diftri¢ts, the other winds were not more formi:
dable.._ It may perhaps be faid that thefe fields being fowed every year, the moifture is
foon exhaulted from a foil naturally barren, and they cannot give fufficient {trength to
the corn to refift the froft; but the quantity of cattle which the country feeds furnithes
fuficient dung to manure the fields every other year. hough the lands for the moft
part are formed of a bed of fand, by the means ofa thin bed of dung which is fpread from
= ae te time
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