ides this, it is a monopoly of theirs
to row a sort of boat, which is impelled by machinery imitating
that of a steamer, but worked by hand. These are tolerably large
vessels, having paddle-wheels fitted to them, which are turned from
within. Each wheel is worked by two young Dalecarlian girls, who
perform this severe labour with the utmost cheerfulness, while an
old woman steers. They pass their lives upon the water, plying from
earliest dawn till late in the night, and conveying passengers, for
a trifling copper coin, across the broad canals which intersect
Stockholm in every direction. Cheerful and pious, the bloom of
health on her cheeks, and the fear of God in her heart, the
Dalecarlian maiden is contented in her humble calling. On Sunday
she would sooner lose a customer than miss her attendance at
church. One sorrowful feeling, and only one, at times saddens her
heart, and that is the _Heimweh_, the yearning after her native
valley, when she longs to return to her wild and beautiful country,
which the high mountains encircle, and the bright stream of the
Dalelf waters. There she has her father and mother, or perhaps a
lover, as poor as herself, and she sees no possibility of ever
earning enough to enable her to return home, and become his wife.

"It was in this province that I now found myself, and its
inhabitants pleased me greatly. Nature has made them hardy and
intelligent, for their life is a perpetual struggle to extract a
scanty subsistence from the niggard and rocky soil. Unenervated by
luxury, uncorrupted by the introduction of foreign vices, they have
been at all periods conspicuous for their love of freedom, for
their penetration in discovering, and promptness in repelling,
attacks upon it. Faithful to their lawful sovereign, they yet
brooked no tyranny; and when invaders entered the land, or bad
governors oppressed them, they were ever ready to defend their just
rights with their lives. From the remotest periods, such has been
the character of this people, which has preserved itself
unsophisticated, true, and free. It is interesting to trace the
history of the Dalecarlians. Isolated in a manner from the rest of
the world amongst their rugged precipices and in their lonely
valleys, it might be supposed they would know nothing of what