On the tops of the mountains there are vast fields of snow and ice like frosting on a huge cake, but as this snow and ice sinks down to the valleys it melts and the water falls in streams like rain running off a roof down a waterspout. This water falling is used in Norway and Sweden to turn wheels and the wheels turning are used to run sawmills and machinery, just the same as if the wheels were turned by steam-engines run with coal fires. Norway and Sweden have no black coal, but the waterfalls do much the same thing; they run machines, and so people speak of their waterfalls as “white coal.”

But white coal won’t do one thing that black coal will do—it won’t heat. In the northern part of Sweden there are iron mines. This iron is particularly good for making tools that have to have sharp edges, like knives and razors. But there is no black coal to melt the iron out of the ore, so they ship most of the ore to England, where there is plenty of coal, and there the English make fine cutlery from it.

Perhaps you have seen pictures of pine-trees in the snow or covered with snow. Anyway, pine-trees and snow seem to go together, and a great part of Norway and Sweden is covered with forests chiefly of pine-trees. Pine-trees—tall, straight ones—make fine masts for ships, flag and telegraph poles, and lumber for building. They also make fine match-sticks, and millions of match-sticks can be made out of a single tree. If you will look on a box of matches that you may find at your home, you will probably see the words “Made in Sweden” printed on it. The smaller trees the Swedes grind up into pulp, which is used to make paper, for almost all paper nowadays—whether it is newspaper, wrapping-paper, or the paper you write on—is made of wood-pulp rolled thin. So the people in Sweden cut down trees, saw them up into logs, slide them into the streams, and float them down to the sea, and there they ship them all over the World. But they take good care to plant little trees for every large tree cut down, so that there will always be more trees.