"Purely by accident I found in a friend's library in Bergen a book by a German entitled REISEN IN AMERIKA.... As this book contained some vivid pictures of the distant regions the traveller had visited, as well as of the impressions he had received of land and people in the new world, it was read with all the allurements of a novel. Here was given full information about the German emigration. With this description of travels in my pocket I went early one summer morning along the bay of Solem and up the steep ascent of Lyderhorn. Up there I read and dreamed of the new wonderful world far away to the west. The mist had sunk low over the fjords between the isles about Bergen, but up there around the tree-tops it was bright sunshine. It was the first time I had seen this glorious sight peculiar to mountain regions. If any prosaic nature ever received poetic inspiration and exaltation it was during this time, while my eyes beheld the sunlit surface of the fog and in the distance caught a glimpse of the sparkling shield of the North Sea, which seemed to rise to the height of the mountain.... And far out toward the west, thousands of miles out there, lies the land about which I am reading, lies the big, still so little known part of the world, with its secrets and its wonders. From that time I sought all books and descriptions of travel concerning America which I could get, and, together with an uncle of mine, I began to collect as much information about the new world, as well through books as through the verbal accounts from Stavanger people, which now began to be current in the district concerning Kleng Peerson's emigration and return, without our yet actually thinking of emigrating. Through a kind friend's help I was enabled in 1834 to spend six months in England, on which occasion I gathered a number of pamphlets and books about America and emigration from England. In this way more definite and more reliable information as to conditions in America and the journey thither gradually spread in the vicinity. This seemed to discredit the many ridiculous and impossible stories now constantly set in circulation. Slowly but steadily the thought of emigrating to America took root; more and more joined the little group which now in earnest began talking of selling their homes and going to America. Then it was that the bishop of Bergen wrote a letter to the farmers of Bergen on the text, "Remain in the country; make your living honorably," whether he forgot it or did not regard it suitable to the occasion, he failed to quote the second commandment of the passage: "Multiply and fill the world." The latter the farmers had adhered to; most of them had large families, and since the land at home was filled, while they now heard that a large part of the new world was unsettled, they decided to disobey the bishop's advice and go to