Leaving old home and friends - weaving goodbyes to emigrants starting for America.

The picture for this month is taken from an old stereoview by Underwood & Underwood, "From Notes and Travel, No 32, 1906. The text on the back reads: "The chief business districts of Christiania lie off at our right. We are looking approximately south. These waters are the head of Christiania fjord. The Wilson line ocean steamer Angelo is just steaming out the harbor; it will take her five hours to get down to Christiansand at the mouth of the fjord, and then there will be a thirty-hour voyage, across open sea, to Hull (England). There she will connect with transatlantic liners for new York and Boston. A large proportion of the passengers are on their way to America. It is said that there are to-day more men and women of Norwegian descent living in America than there are living in Norway. The increase in the emigration movement during the past few years is very striking: in 1901 there were 12,488 emigrants to America; in 1903 the registration reached 25,109. Increasing numbers are also making new homes in certain of the new lands in the northwestern provinces of British America, adjacent to Minnesota and north Dakota. They make most desirable citizens wherever they go, for they are intelligent, thrifty and ambitious for their children, and are very soon found taking their share of responsibility as office holders under a republican form of government. Nor do they forget relatives and friends here in the old home-land. Postal records kept by the United States government show that in a single year Norwegian residents of the United States have sent cash remittances to Norway amounting to more than a million dollars.