JULY 191 



stars ? The men, it is said, go to the North Sea fishing, 

 a dreadful toil which may well serve as their excuse for 

 dawdling through the sweet o' the year. Substantial 

 yeomen, many of them, they own land which might be 

 better tilled. Especially do they neglect the pleasure 

 and profit to be had from gardens. Here no carnations 

 toss from window-boxes their perfume, so grateful to the 

 traveller in the Alps; no roses cluster round the doors 

 nor pansies in the plots. The culture of pot-herbs and 

 small fruits is almost entirely neglected, albeit these grow 

 abundantly and ripen fast under the long sunlit hours and 

 refreshing showers, and would be eagerly bought by those 

 English visitors who are at pains to import bottled pease 

 and asparagus. Wild strawberries of exquisite flavour 

 positively redden while you wait. There are plenty of wild 

 bees, and good clover in the meadows, yet have I not seen 

 a single beehive in Romsdal. The farmers seem to have 

 no ambition beyond scratching up an annual break in 

 amateurish fashion with rude wooden ploughs, drawn 

 by the sleek khaki-coloured ponies which they treat so 

 tenderly; but on some of these patches the corn does 

 not promise to return more than the seed, with a little 

 over for the poultry. Haymaking, indeed, is a more 

 serious matter, begun, continued, and ended in feverish 

 haste, before the sun deserts the dale. The grass is sub- 

 jected to a kind of 'kippering' process on hurdles, but 

 nobody seems to have suggested the application of the 

 silo system, peculiarly adapted for dealing with abundant 

 lush herbage. 



Poor and hard although their lives may be, these sweet- 

 tempered folk seem entirely contented with them as they 

 are. It is difficult to realise that they are the children of 



