8-9. Education, care of the poor, the language spoken in America, and the difficulties of learning it. 10. Is there danger of disease in America? Is there reason to fear wild animals and the Indians? 11. Advice as to the kind of people to emigrate, and warning against unreasonable expectations. 12. "What dangers may be expected on the ocean? Is it true that those who are taken to America are sold as slaves?" 13. Advice as to vessels, routes, seasons, exchange of money, etc. Rynning assured his readers, in the seventh chapter, that America is not a purely heathen country, but that the Christian religion prevails with liberty of conscience, and that "here as in Norway, there are laws, government, and authority, and that the common man can go where he pleases without passport, and may engage in such occupation as he likes."[67] Then follows this strong, significant paragraph, intelligently describing the slavery system, which undoubtedly had a powerful influence on the future location, and hence on the politics, of the immigrants from Scandinavia: "In the Southern States these poor people (Negroes) are bought and sold like other property, and are driven to their work with a whip like horses and oxen. If a master whips his slave to death or in his rage shoots him dead, he is not looked upon as a murderer.... In Missouri the slave trade is still permitted, but in Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin Territory it is strictly forbidden, and the institution is strictly despised.... There will probably soon come a separation between the Northern and Southern States or a bloody conflict." [67] Rynning, _Sandfærdig Beretning_, 23, 24. Translated in Anderson, _Norwegian Immigration_, 214-215. From the account given thirty years afterwards by Ansten Nattestad, it appears that a chapter on the religious condition of Norway was omitted by the Rev. Mr. Kragh of Eidsvold, who read the proofs, because of its criticisms of the clergy for their intolerance, and for their inactivity in social and educational reforms.[68] This has led some writers like R. B. Anderson to attribute large weight to religious persecution as a cause of emigration. While religious repression was a real grievance and affected many of the early emigrants, the cases where it was the moving or dominant cause of emigration after 1835 are so few as to be almost negligible.[69] At best, it re-enforced and completed a determination based on other motives. For most Norwegian dissenters, the Haugians for example, lack of toleration was rather an annoyance than a distress, save, perhaps, for the more persistent and turbulent leaders.[70] It is hardly fair, therefore, to compare them, as a whole, with the Huguenots of France.[71] [68] _Billed Magazin_, I, 94. [69] Letters of R. B. Anderson and J. A. Johnson, _Daily Skandinaven_, Feb. 7, 1896. [70] Brohough, _Elling Eielsens Liv og Virksomhed_, 10-11, 20-21, 30-36.