347. would you do in such a coun try? Why, go sailing and fishing, of course. With a coast like theirs they have to go to sea. For hundreds of years the people of Norway have been great sailors. Their strong wooden boats went to Iceland and Green land and North America a thousand years ago. To-day one-fifth of all the men in Norway are sailors, and many others are building boats in Norway. Many of the boat-builders in the United States have come from that country. Norwegian ships carry freight on many a distant sea. They even bring some of our bananas from Central America to New Orleans and New York. Hundreds of Norwegian boats go out from the ports of Bergen, Stavanger, and other fishing towns, to catch herring and codfish, some of which are sent to foreign countries.
Norway also sells lumber from her big forests, and paper pulp, made by grinding the wood of the smaller trees.
Norway and Sweden have no coal with which to run their mills, but there is plenty of water power, because there are so many waterfalls. So they need buy from Eng land only enough coal to run their ships and to heat the houses in a few of the cities. Most of the people live near the forests and burn wood.
348. is much like Norway, but it is larger, and has more forest land and more low land. It also extends farther south, and for that reason has more land suitable for farming than has Norway. This is the reason why it has nearly three times as many people.
In both of these countries, the climate is so cool that the farmers must live in the southern part of the country. There they raise potatoes, turnips, barley, oats and hay, all of which are crops that do well in a cool climate. But having no wheat these
people have to buy nearly all that they use for bread. They also buy grain for their cows. Sweden sells butter, lumber, paper pulp, iron ore, and iron. You remember (Sec. 197) that England uses Swedish iron ore. The iron that Sweden herself makes is of very fine quality. Millions of little boxes of safety matches made of soft wood are sent from Sweden to the United States every year.
349. Lapland and the extreme northern part of Norway and Sweden, and in the neighboring part of Russia, where it is too cold for .trees to grow, there is nothing but low bushes, grass and moss. This is Lapland, a region much like a part of our own Eskimo land. The Lapps are yellow people or Mongolians, like the Eskimos, but they are much better off than the Eskimos, because they long ago tamed the ,wild reindeer. This animal lives on the moss and grass, and gives the Laplander milk, and draws his sled. The Lapps wrap themselves in plenty of rein deer-skin clothes, live in tents, and follow their herds of reindeer wherever there is food for them to eat. How would you like to live that way? 350. the east of Sweden across the Gulf of Bothnia is Finland, a cold rough country with many lakes and thickly covered with forest. For a long time Finland was ruled by the Czar of Russia, but it is now independent. The Finns are much like the Swedes, tall, light haired people, intelligent, and well edu cated. Like the Swedes, the Finns make most of their living by farming and chop ping timber that goes to England, Ger many, Holland, and Belgium.