Ch. ii. in Sweden. 279 



bitants of the country than in Sweden.* The 

 towns in Sweden are indeed larger and more un- 

 healthy than in Norway ; but there is no reason 

 to think that the country is naturally more unfa- 

 vourable to the duration of human life. The 

 mountains of Norway are in general not habitable. 

 The only peopled parts of the country are the 

 valleys. Many of these valleys are deep and 

 narrow clefts in the mountains; and the cultivated 

 spots in the bottom, surrounded as they are by 

 almost perpendicular cliffs of a prodigious height,"!" 

 which intercept the rays of the sun for many 

 hours, do not seem as if they could be so healthy 

 as the more exposed and drier soil of Sweden. 



It is difficult therefore entirely to account for 

 the mortality of Sweden, without supposing that 

 the habits of the people, and the continual cry of 

 the government for an increase of subjects, tend 

 to press the population too hard against the limits 

 of subsistence, and consequently to produce dis- 

 eases, which are the necessary effect of poverty 



* Thaarup's Statistik tier Danischen Monarchic, vol. ii. tab. ii. 

 p. 5. 1765. 



f Some of these valleys are strikingly picturesque. The princi- 

 pal road from Christiana to Drontheim leads for nearly 180 

 English miles through a continued valley of this kind, by the side 

 of a very fine river, which in one part stretches out into the exten- 

 sive lake Miosen. I am inclined to believe that there is not any 

 river in all Europe, the course of which affords such a constant 

 succession of beautiful and romantic scenery. It goes under dif- 

 ferent names in different parts. The verdure in the Norway val- 

 leys is peculiarly soft, the foliage of the trees luxuriant, and in 

 summer no traces appear of a northern climate. 



