The Land 3 



more casual tliau it is perhaps in reality, if we come to 

 understand the principles upon which it is carried out. 

 The meadows are beautiful in the eye of the traveller, 

 for they are full of wild flowers ; but they would not 

 be beautiful in the eyes of a scientific farmer. Here 

 they are a mass of harebells ; a little further on pink 

 campion (ragged robin), or, that with us rarer form of 

 campion, the fly-catcher, colours them crimson. Over 

 all wave the heads of dock sorrel their rich russet 

 brown. Then, again, in the midst of the meadow you 

 come, without any apparent rhyme or reason, upon a 

 little patch of potatoes or barley. In a later chapter 

 we shall speak again of these eccentricities in farming ; 

 for the present we have only to do with the impression 

 they make upon the eye of the traveller. On the 

 other side it must be admitted that, occasionally, we 

 are surprised by the ingenuity with which the smallest 

 opportunities have been seized upon. We may some- 

 times see the top of a fiat rock, though not much bigger 

 than a good-sized table, made to bear a crop of corn or 

 potatoes. One instance of this I can especially well 

 remember. It lies on the road between Gronaas and 

 Hellesylt. All the side of that road, between it and 

 the river, the ground is a mass of immense stones and 

 boulders, the cUhris of glaciers and avalanches in past 

 times. It seems a region given up to barrenness. But 

 on one of these rocks, which, because it is quite flat, 

 is suited to retain a layer of earth, there grows this 

 little potato-patch, an oasis in a wilderness. 



At the best, however, the cultivated lands throughout 

 Norway bear but a small proportion to the unculti- 

 vated area of the country, — they seem of no account 



