Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/53

or opposition of tribes as warlike as themselves, cannot now be known from any historical data; but from physical data we may conjecture that such a deviation from what we would consider the more natural run of the tide of a population seeking a living in new homes, may have been preferable to any other course in their social condition. We make a wrong estimate of the comparative facilities of subsisting, in the early ages of mankind, in the northern and southern countries of Europe. If a tribe of red-men from the forests of America had been suddenly transported in the days of Tacitus to the forests of Europe beyond the Rhine, where would they, in what is called the hunter state, that is, depending for subsistence on the spontaneous productions of nature, have found in the greatest abundance the means and facilities of subsisting themselves? Unquestionably on the Scandinavian peninsula, intersected by narrow inlets of the sea teeming with fish, by lakes and rivers rich in fish, and in a land covered with forests, in which not only all the wild animals of Europe that are food for man abound, but from the numerous lakes, rivers, ponds, and precipices in this hunting-field, are to be got at and caught with much greater facility than on the boundless plains, on which, from the Rhine to the Elbe, and from the Elbe to the Vistula, or to the steppes of Asia, there is scarcely a natural feature of country to hem in a herd of wild animals in their flight, and turn them into any particular tract or direction to which the hunters could resort with advantage, and at which they could depend on meeting their prey. At this day Norway is the only country in Europe in which men subsist in considerable comfort in what may be called the hunter state,—that is, upon the natural products of the earth and waters, to which man in the rudest state must have equally had access in all ages,—and derive their food, fuel, clothing, and lodging from the forest,