The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

LAND TENURE.H7almost any forage, and iu many places living on a fish diet. The sheepof the heaths, small, bony, covered with a coarse wool, with hairy legs, heads,and sometimes even tails, have a marvellous power of endurance. Alongthe Stavanger coast and farther north in all the archipelagos the flocks passthe winter in the open air, exposed to wind, rain, and snows, living onheather and seaweeds. In the island of Gotland there is also a particular breedof spirited and half-wild little ponies which pass nearly the whole year in theopen.The importance of the forests in the rural economy of Scandinavia is wellknown. Timber represents about one-half of all the Swedish exports. Beams,planks, joists, stays, and shafts for mines are shipped from the ports of the Gulfof Bothnia and at Goteborg for Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, Australia, NewZealand; but more than one-half of this trade is with England. The Scandinaviantimber trade represents a yearly value of over £8,000,000, of which £5,200,000belongs to Sweden. Yet, notwithstanding its importance, forestry has not hithertoreceived all the attention it deserves, and the virgin forests alone have so far beentapped. Operations are carried on chiefly in remote districts, where the woodmen,mostly held in a sort of serfdom by the traders, who make the necessary advancesat heavy interest, are compelled to build temporary huts in which to pass theseason of cold and darkness, when the hardest work has to be done. The horsesremain under shelter, protected only by woollen cloths. The trunks marked withthe axe are dragged through the snow to the river banks, where they are floateddown over falls and rapids, from like to lake, to the saw-mills, where they areworked up into beams and planks. In several inland districts the river and lakebeds are thickly strewn with stems, which, having failed to do the journey within ayear, have been dried by the summer sun upon the banks, and then water-logged atthe floodings. When certain lakes are drained, the alluvia of their beds are foundmingled with several successive layers of rotten trees.Land Tenure.About 4,000,000, or nearly two-thirds of the entire Scandinavian population,are estimated to live on the cultivation of the land and direct trade in its produce.The small proprietors form a tolerably large proportion of the rural element, andmost of the farmers cultivate their temporary holdings under the guarantee oftraditional usages, which give them a real independence. The Norwegian, like theSwedish peasantry, have always preserved the right to choose their own domicileand acquire land. They were never serfs, like those of the greater part of Europe,and the Danish laws obliging the peasant to remain in his birthplace till hisfortieth year were unknown north of the Skager B-ak. Common lands were, andstill are, very numerous in Scandinavia. Waste grounds, mountain pastures, andforests belong mostly to several heads of families, to a whole parish, or even toseveral jointly. In many places, also, the old common tenure had been replaced