definite period (often during their natural lives). In some cases the
cotter leases only a building with a garden attached; in other cases
several acres of ground. The cotter is usually required to work on
the farm of the owner at certain times of the year for a small wage
regulated by contract. These cotters correspond to our truck farmers,
and their plots of ground number about 35,000 on the outskirts of the
cities and villages. They raise potatoes and other vegetables, and hay
enough to feed a horse and several cows. In most cases the women and
children do the work, while the men are engaged in other occupations.

It is no longer permitted to establish entails which can not be sold
or mortgaged, and the national government in recent years has sought
to further the partition and allotment of the common ownership
of land. Pastures and grazing lands are still often held by the
community, and similarly mountain pastures. But the community farms,
when the consent of all the part owners and tenants has been
secured, may now be partitioned by surveyors appointed by the public
authorities.

In the great timber districts of the mountain ranges, the trees are
felled in winter and the logs are dragged to the tops of the steep
mountain sides, where they are slid down to the river, or they are
carted on sledges to the river's edge. During the early summer, after
the ice has gone, and while the rivers are yet full of water, they
are floated down the streams to the sawmills. But, as the logs are
constantly being driven into corners or lodging against piers,
floaters are employed to keep the logs in the current. Log-floating is
both the most dangerous and the most unhealthful occupation in Norway.
Men often fall into the streams; they are forced to sleep on the cold
ground in uninhabited parts of the country; they frequently fall from