Life of the Wood-cutters 351 



and lives iii a little hut which he hiuiself has made, and 

 whither he carries a good store of provisions. If he is 

 reasonaljly near the inhabited parts of the country he 

 may make frequent returns to his family and friends ; 

 but this is not always possible, for the distances to 

 which he removes are often very great. The ground 

 during all this time is probably covered with a gar- 

 ment of snow, and has the intense stillness which 

 belongs to this condition; a stillness, however, which 

 is from time to time broken by the roaring sound of 

 the wind, which in piue forests can be heard from an 

 innnense distance. The great distances over which the 

 woodman may have to travel, if he goes back to the 

 inhabited country, and the roughness of the ground 

 over which he passes, are both lessened for him by this 

 friendly covering of snow. For he does not walk over 

 it, but skates on his snow-skates or skis {skier) — instru- 

 ments very unlike the skates with which we are 

 acquainted. Their runners are of great length, much 

 lonoer even than those of Dutch skates, and likewise 

 much broader, and they are made of wood. In the 

 intense cold of these winter nights the woodcutter has 

 to keep a fire continually burning in his hut to pre- 

 vent himself from being frozen to death. He does not, 

 however, keep himself warm by drinking spirits to the 

 extent that a labourer similarly situated would do in 

 Great Britain or North Germany. His chief beverage 

 is coffee. The horses that are used to drag the felled 

 trees sometimes suffer extremely from the cold ; and 

 probably no other horses but the Norwegian could 

 endure it. As it is, they are often obliged to be 

 worked in the night to prevent them from being frozen 



