There were, however, conditions in the home-lands as well as in America, which impelled immigration. Anyone who has travelled over the fertile prairies of the Mississippi valley and then through Norway or Sweden, will often wonder that so many people have been content to remain so long in the older Scandinavia. In Norway there were in 1910, in round numbers, 2,390,000 people on an area of 124,000 square miles.[15] Of this population, about 425,000 were gathered in the larger towns, and 250,000 were in the smaller towns, making a total urban population of 29%, over against 21% twenty years before. The remainder were scattered over the vast mountainous country or along the coast-line of three thousand miles.[16] Thousands of fishermen's huts are grappled barnacle-like to the rocks, while behind them along a trickling thread of water stretches a precious hand-breadth of soil. The greater part of the interior is one wide furrowed plateau, in whose hollows, by lakes and streams, thrifty farmers skilfully utilize their few square yards of tillable land and pasture their cattle on the steep slopes. Save around Lake Mjösen, the Leir, Vos, and Throndhjem, there can scarcely be found in all Norway anything like a broad rich meadow. The farm products are almost literally mined from the rocks. "It is by dogged, persistent, indomitable toil and endurance, backed up in some cases by irrepressible daring, that the Norwegian peasant and fisher-folk--three-fourths of the population--carry on with any show of success their struggle against iron nature."[17] Yet in spite of such adverse conditions, these people have ever clung with passionate tenacity to their mountainous storm-beaten Norway, and by it have been made brave without bitterness, hardy without harshness, strong yet tender. [15] _Statesman's Year-Book, 1914_, 1141 ff. [16] In 1880, 20% lived in towns; in 1890, 23.7% lived in towns, and 76.3% in the rural districts. _Norway_ (English edition of the official volume prepared for the Paris Exhibition of 1900), 90. [17] Wm. Archer, "Norway Today," _Fortnightly Rev._, XLIV, 415.