k of goats. She will be out with them all day as they feed
on the mountain-sides, and will do all the milking. When seen for
the first time this is rather an amusing operation, and decidedly a
practical one. The milkmaid seizes a goat, straddles her, with face
towards the goat's tail, and, stooping down, proceeds to milk. From
a little distance all you see is the goat's hind-legs emerging from
beneath a blue petticoat, which looks most peculiar.

But the children who are too young to spend the summer at the saeters
find plenty to do at home, and they learn almost as soon as they
can toddle that there is work for everyone. Quite small boys and
girls manage to do a good day's haymaking, and they can row a boat or
drive a _carriole_ before they have reached their teens. Such things
they regard as amusements, for they have few other ways of amusing
themselves, and their one ambition is to do what their fathers and
mothers do.

In some cases the small farmers move their whole families up to the
mountain pastures for the summer; and, in addition to the dairy work,
they rent the fishing on some of the mountain lakes, which they
net freely. The trout thus caught are split open and salted down
in barrels, eventually being sent down to the markets in the towns,
where they fetch a good price. And all these peasants possess rifles,
and are keen sportsmen, so that when August comes they go in pursuit
of the wild reindeer, and lay up a store of meat, which, salted and
dried, comes in very handy in the hard times of winter.

As a rule the peasants eat very little meat, and what they do eat has
probably been smoked and dried and hung up for several months. A good
deal of salt fish is consumed; but the principal food is porridge
(_groed_), made of barley, rye, or oatmeal, and eaten generally with
sour buttermilk, with the addition of potatoes, when plentiful. White
bread is not found far from the towns, and the black, or rye, bread
is a heavy compound, a taste for which takes an Englishman some time
to acquire. But even that is superior to the _fladbroed_, which in
appearance and consistency resembles old boot-leather.

The well-to-do farmer lives more sumptuously. He occasionally has fresh
meat and fresh fish, and the dried articles nearly every day. He also
indulges in cheese, usually of the commoner kind, known as _prim_,
or _mysost_, which is not unlike brown Windsor soap. There are two
other native cheeses, but they are conside