5§ NATURAL HISTORY of NORWAY. 



all earthly enjoyments are mixed with bitters, according to the 

 poet's faying, 



Omnis commoditas fua fert incommoda fecum, 



fo the inhabitants of a mountainous country may in general be 

 faid to labour under more inconveniencies than others ; as the 

 country, in the firft place, is lefs fruitful, the arable ground being 

 but little in comparifon with the waftes and deferts. The difpro- 

 portion in many provinces, efpecially thofe which are entirely 

 over-run with mountains, betwixt their produce and the inhabi- 

 tants is very great, they being under a neceffity of procuring one 

 half of their fuftenance out of the fea. In the next place, the vil- 

 lages cannot be fo large, compact, and convenient as in other 

 parts ; but the houfes lie fcattered among the vallies, generally at 

 half or a quarter of a league diftance, although up the country 

 the farm-houfes are both larger, and ftand thicker than in the 

 vallies of Bergen, where they are the fmaller, from the vaffc ex- 

 tent of the mountains. In fnme places, as in the creeks in Ulland 

 and Nordal, the peafants houfes ftand fo high, and on the edge of 

 fuch a fteep precipice, that ladders are fixed to climb up to 

 them , fo that when a prieft is fent for, who is unpra&ifed in 

 the road, he rifks his life, and chiefly in winter when it is frip- 

 pery. In fuch places a corps muft be let down with ropes, or 

 be brought on men's backs, before it is laid in the coffin. The 

 mail likewife in winter muft, at fome diftance from Bergen, be 

 drawn up over the fteepeft mountains. Under this head of inconve- 

 niences we may alfo reckon the very difficult roads, extremely fo to 

 the day-labourers, but particularly to travellers, who cannot with- 

 out terror pafs feveral places even in the king's road, over the fides 

 of fteep and craggy mountains, and on ways which are either 

 fhored up or fufpended by iron bolts faftened in the mountains, 

 and tho' not above the breadth of a foot-path, without any rails 

 on the fide, as indeed it is impoffible to fix any ; not to mention 

 the fudden rifing of the rivers, which they muft either wade thro', 

 or crofs over on ruinous bridges *. In this diocefe the bridges are 



not 



* In the narrow pafs of Naeroe, leading to Waas, is a very remarkable piece of 



antiquity, being a way fufpended on iron bolts, which the famous king Suerre, in 



the year 1200, or above fix hundred years ago, caufed to be faftened into the rocks, 



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