people
generally. What are called the wild birds of Scandinavia are in fact
remarkably tame, and they embrace a large variety. As the traveller
proceeds through the country, he will observe sheaves of unthrashed
grain elevated upon poles beside the farm-houses and barns, which are
designed to furnish the feathered visitors with food. These sheaves
are regularly renewed all through the winter season; otherwise the
birds would starve. The confiding little creatures know their
friends, and often enter the houses for protection from the severity
of the weather. Neither man, woman, nor child would think of
disturbing them, for they are considered as bringing good luck to the
premises which they visit. The bounty paid for the destruction of
bears and wolves in 1885 showed that nearly two hundred of each
species of these animals were killed by the hunters. Bears are
believed to be gradually decreasing, but wolves are still very
numerous in the northerly regions and the thickly-wooded middle
districts. In extreme seasons, when pressed by hunger, they prove
destructive to the reindeer herds of the Lapps in spite of every
ordinary precaution, and even in the summer season farmers never
leave their sheep unguarded when they are pastured away from the
homestead.

In journeying from the capital to Troendhjem (where the steamer is
taken for the North Cape) by the way of Lillehammer, one crosses the
Dovrefjeld, or mountain plateau; but a more popular route is by rail
from city to city. This fjeld lies a little above the sixty-second
parallel of latitude, and is about one third of the distance from the
southern to the northern extreme of the country, which reaches from
the fifty-eighth to the seventy-first parallel. The famous elevation
called the Sneehaettan--"Snow Hat"--forms a part of this Alpine
range, and is one of the loftiest in Norway, falling little short of
eight thousand feet in altitude. To be exact, it ranks sixth among
the Scandinavian mountains. It should be remembered that one eighth
of the country lies within the region of perpetual snow, and that
these lofty and nearly inaccessible heights are robed in a constant
garb of bridal whiteness. No other part of Europe or any inhabited
portion of the globe has such enormous glaciers or snowfields,
unless possibly some portions of Alaska. Here in Norway are glaciers
which cover from four to five hundred square miles, descending from
plateaus three and four thousand feet in