together; it rains frequently at BERGEN in the midft of winter*, and the ports of Hamburg, Lubeck, and Amfterdam, are locked up with froft ten times for once that this city is fo expofed. In fhort, this is an accident that doth not happen more than two or three times in an age. The vapours, which rife from the ocean, con- tinually foften the ſharpneſs of the cold; and it is only in the coafts of Iceland, Fin- mark, and Greenland, that are found thoſe immenfe and eternal banks of ice, of which voyagers make fuch a noife, and which, when they are fevered, may fometimes float along the coafts of Norway.
The greatest inconvenience to which this vast country is expofed, arifes without difpute, from the inequality of the ground, from it's being almoft entirely covered with rocks and ftones, and croft every way by high and large mountains, which render a great part of it wild and defert. There grow, not- withstanding, feveral forts of grain in many of the provinces, as in the UPLANDS, the RYFOLKE, JEDEREN ; the reft which have not this advantage may eafily be fupplied from Jutland or the Danish iflands, by means of the navigation. Various
- See PONTOPPIDAN'S
natural history of Norway, vol. i.
+ HOLBERG'S Danm. og. Norg. Beskrivelse. [i. e. Description of Denmark and Norway.] p. 36. & seqq.
