not on a holiday trip? We English have an almost incurable habit of
trying to acquire useful information while _en voyage_. If a man goes
up a mountain, instead of enjoying the fresh air and exercise, he must
needs go armed with scientific apparatus enough to start a government
laboratory. Now, in Stockholm you may really enjoy yourself thoroughly
if you only keep clear of museums and learned institutes, those traps
for the unsuspecting holiday-maker, who, before he is aware, finds
himself suffering from a surfeit of useful knowledge. Don't look at
"Murray" or "Baedeker," but just allow yourself to go with the tide in
this pleasure-loving city. In the forenoon one must eat ices in the
delicious little café called the Strömparterre. It is a garden by the
water-side, and, though quite in the centre of the town, bright with a
profusion of flowers and waving trees. Here you may sit and watch the
little steamers coming and going every few minutes from the Djurgárd
Park. The waters are alive with these boats, and with other craft, for
the locomotion of the city is mostly conducted by water. One can go
anywhere and everywhere, it would seem, for a few ocre, and remember
there are a hundred ocre in a riksdollar, and a riksdollar is about
thirteen pence of our money.
One of the first of many pleasant excursions that we made was to
Mariefred and the royal castle of Gripsholm. This interesting place is
on the south side of the Mälar Lake. The steamer from Stockholm takes
about three hours, and the voyage gives one an opportunity of seeing
some of the prettiest scenery in the environs of the capital. The
deep fjords, the fairy islands, the well-wooded banks of the Mälar
Lake, present an ever-changing combination of picturesque objects.
Conspicuous among the rest is the high rock of Kungshatt, where stands
a pole with a hat, to keep alive the story of some king of old, who
jumped on horseback from this giddy summit into the water below, when
pursued by enemies, and only suffered the inconvenience of losing his
hat. What a habit this must have been in the old times! for one hardly
ever sees a nasty bit of rock with an ugly chasm yawning beneath, that
you don't hear of some ill-advised persons taking the leap either for
love or hate....
The Castle of Gripsholm was erected in the twelfth century by Bo
Jonsson Grip, a certain Croesus of those days; in fact, he was the
most powerful noble in the land, and was selected by Alberta of
Mecklenburg to be his "all-powerful helper," for then as now the Swedes
hated the Germans. The Rhyming Chronicler of the time says that Bo
Jonsson "ruled the land with a glance of his eye." He had a bad habit,
however, of using his sword as well as his eye, for history tells us
how he followed his foe, knight Karl Nilsson, into the church of the
Franciscans at Stockholm, and hacked him to pieces before the high
altar!
When Gustavus Vasa became king, after his romantic wanderings and
hair-breadth escapes in Dalecarlia, he rebuilt Gripsholm, and it became
the favorite residence of royalty. These castle walls have witnessed
many dismal scenes, quite out of harmony with the lovely and natural
surroundings, for there are few fairer spots in all Sweden.
In one of the towers Eric XIV. kept his brother John a prisoner for
several years. The latter had married a Polish princess, and was
concerned in a war against Sweden, but, falling prisoner, was sent by
the king to the castle of Gripsholm. This Eric was one of our Queen
Elizabeth's suitors, and history records that by way of making himself
acceptable he sent ambassadors to the English court with costly gifts,
among which were eighteen piebald horses and several chests of uncoined
bars of gold and silver, strings of Oriental pearls, and many valuable
furs. Queen Elizabeth accepted the gifts, but declined the alliance. It
was a way she had.
The interior of Gripsholm is a perfect museum of curiosities: there
are nearly two thousand historical portraits, and a vast quantity of
antique furniture, old tapestry, and curious silver vessels, which had
served their time at royal banquets.
THE MIDNIGHT SUN.
LANGLEY COLERIDGE.
[The midnight sun, as visible at the summer solstice from the
North Cape of Norway, is becoming one of the necessary spectacles
of modern travel. Alike for those who cannot and for those who
hope to go there we give the following description of what a
former traveller saw from this cape and on the way thither.]
I really cannot tell what is the great charm of Norway, nor do I think
the nameless charm is the same for each. Perhaps those who are old
travellers enjoy Norway most. It is well known that in order to do the
Whole Duty of Travel an apprenticeship must be served, by no means an
irksome one; on the contrary, full of delight; nevertheless, it is an
apprenticeship, and, until it has been served, no man can pass as a
member of the travelled community. The curriculum includes a knowledge
of Paris, of the Rhine, of Switzerland, and a dozen regular rounds.
When these have all been "done," then comes Norway as a land of pure
delight to the traveller.
There are no picture-galleries to make one's neck ache; no museum
to make the weary feet throb; no promenades; no sherry-cobblers to
sip while bands play in the gardens; no continuations of London and
Brighton. There are no crowds; you may see a magnificent waterfall all
by yourself, or ascend a hundred Rigis without meeting a soul. There
are no loafers; and you may get into boats and out of boats, into
carrioles and out of carrioles, without one humpbacked beggar-boy or
man with his eye in a sling to whine at you, or one officious person
getting in the way in order to be paid for it. There are no mammoth
hotels, where you have to climb a dozen flights of stairs before you
can reach your bed; no billiards when once you have left the three
chief towns; no stuffy railways to whizz you past the best scenery; no
dressing for dinner.
Now, all these things, to one who has been over and over again to the
most civilized places in the world, are very refreshing; and yet these
are perhaps but minor points, and do not explain the secret of the
great charm of Norway. Rip Van Winkle's was a wonderful sleep; he woke
and found the world had gone forward a hundred years; but the traveller
who sleeps on the North Sea and wakes up in the morning in Norway has
had a more wonderful sleep. He wakes and finds the world has gone back
half a millennium! Southward the countries of Europe have struggled and
slaved in the race for the perfection of civilization, while Norway is
as it was in the beginning. Southward the countries have obeyed the
watchword, "Forward!" Norway has obeyed the signal, "As you were!"
Now, fancy yourself--you, who have done as the Southerners do--arriving
at a little village in an out-of-the-way place in Norway. Nobody
flutters about your carriole to escort you to a hotel, but you enter
the "station," a low, rambling wooden structure, with diffidence. You
see the lady of the house and shake hands with her; you ask her to be
good enough to let you stay there the night; you enter a bedroom, where
everything is plain as a deal box, but clean as a Dutch tulip. Then
you sit down with the family in the general room to your meal. It will
assuredly consist of either trout and salmon, or salmon and trout, with
perhaps an egg, perhaps potatoes, perhaps black bread. No Bass, but
perhaps some Norsk Öl, a very pleasant beverage. After supper you will
smoke a pipe with your landlord, who will probably invite you to see
the pigs, or will lend you a hand to splice up any broken harness of
your carriole.
About nine or ten o'clock you will go to bed, in the broad daylight if
it be summer-time, and in the morning you will wake up, finding the
landlady's daughter at your bedside, with a delicious cup of hot coffee
and a natty little roll, or perchance a biscuit. And then, still early
in the morning, you will bid farewell as to old friends, you will shake
hands all round, and away in your carriole to drive through romantic
scenery, and to feel as though Norway had been made specially for you.
Before you have been two days in the country you will love the quaint,
unsophisticated people, so hearty in their kindness, so ungrudging
in their hospitality, and their Old-World manners and customs, so
genuine in an age of sham, so solid in an age of veneer. One great
charm of Norway, then, is its people; another, and perhaps more to be
appreciated by some, is its scenery.
"Is it like Switzerland?" No; Norway is only like Norway. It is not
so grand as regards the height of its mountains, yet its grandeur is
far more solemn. It has a dozen fjords more startling than the Lake
of Lucerne; in a day's journey you will pass waterfalls and cascades
which would make a fortune to "proprietors" in Switzerland, and are
not so much as mentioned in the Norwegian guide-books. Switzerland
is grand beyond compare, but it must be confessed it is a monotonous
grandeur. Not so with Norway: its charms of scenery are varied as they
are unique. A coast wild and rugged; mighty pine-forests, interminable;
lakes beautiful as Windermere; fjords awful in their grandeur; valleys
rich in their fertility; fjelds bare and barren; sport with the gun,
sport with the rod; these and a hundred other charms may be entered in
the catalogue.
But all these are outweighed by the strange, weird beauty and grandeur
of the neighborhood of the North Cape. I know of nothing that comes
within the range of tourist experiences that will make a more lasting
impression on the memory than a day or two in the region of the
midnight sun.
For the student, the professional man, the overworked generally, and
especially those whose brains are overworked, there is no tour that
will be more beneficial than the one I propose briefly to sketch.
Go to Christiansand. Then, if you have never been to Norway, proceed to
Christiania, and, after staying a day or two in that interesting town
and neighborhood, continue your journey either to Trondhjem or Bergen,
it matters not which, or, better still, if you can, do both. The trip
to one, the other, or both, will give you a good idea of scenery in
Norway. At either Bergen or Trondhjem take the steamer for Hammerfest.
And then will commence one of the most delightful voyages it is
possible to make.
The steamer keeps close to the shore, and the shore is the most curious
in the world; you have but to look at a map to see its wonderful
indentations; you cannot realize them until you find yourself now in
a bay or a cove, now among groups of islands, then in the midst of a
fjord, with sheer rocks rising perpendicularly from the sea, and anon
in the harbor of a little town, with groups of wondering peasantry
around you. You will see some parts of the coast so wild that you
cannot credit the fact that human beings can be found there, and you
will find verdant nooks so peaceful and pretty that you will be tempted
to think that there, away from the world, you would like to build your
house and finish up your days. At one time you will come to the haunts
of water-fowl innumerable; at another a shoal of whales will be around
you.
The towns and villages at which you will halt will have a special
charm. The curious costumes of the people; the antique architecture of
their houses and churches; the good, but old-fashioned, contrivances
connected with their fishing avocations,--all these will be novel.
Among the red-letter days of the trip will be a sail among the Loffoden
Islands, "jagged as the jaws of a shark," and swarming with sea-fowl;
a glimpse at the neighborhood of the Maelström, so celebrated in
fable; a visit to a Lapp encampment, and an occasional stroll through
some of the towns at which the steamer stays. Tromsö is one of these
halting-places: it is a modern town, which has grown rapidly. It was
only founded in 1794, and in 1816 had but three hundred inhabitants;
now, owing to the success of its herring-fishery, it has grown
strangely for Norway, and has a population of over five thousand. It is
charmingly situated on an island, and its rich fertility contrasts most
singularly with the wildness of the surrounding mountains. Hammerfest,
too, is interesting, not only because it is the most northerly
town in the world, and because "in the season" it is crowded with
representatives of all nations, who come here to trade, but because
here you are within the limits of the region of the Midnight Sun, and
from here you will take your boat (unless you continue by the Vadsö
steamer) for the North Cape.
The effect of the midnight sun has been variously described. Carlyle
revels in the idea that while all the nations of the earth are
sleeping, you here stand in the presence of that great power which
will wake them all; Bayard Taylor delights in the gorgeous coloring;
and each traveller has some new poetic thought to register. For myself
the midnight sun has a solemnity which nothing else in nature has.
Midnight is solemn in the darkness; it is a hundredfold more solemn in
the glare of sunlight, richer than ever is sun under tropical skies.
It is "silence, as of death;" not the hum of a bird, not the buzz of
an insect, not the distant voice of a human being. Silence palpable.
You do not feel drowsy, though it is midnight; you feel a strange fear
creep over you as if in a nightmare, and dare not speak; you think what
if it should be true that the world is in its last sleep, and you are
the last living ones, yourselves on the verge of the Eternal Ocean?
It is amusing, afterwards, to think of the way in which you landed
on your excursion to the North Cape; how every one seemed impressed
with the same idea that it was a sacrilege to break the silence, and
the party that set forth in high spirits had settled down into the
gravity of a funeral cortége. And it is strange how the stillness and
awfulness, felt while in the little boat upon the silent sea, held you
spellbound and entranced; and the spell could not be broken until you
set to work on the difficult climb to the head of the North Cape. And
when you reached the top you felt--well, I don't know how.
To some standing on the highest part of the plateau, a thousand feet
above the sea, and looking away to that great unknown Arctic Ocean, it
has seemed as if they had come to the end of the earth; that they were
gazing upon the confines of the eternal regions; that they saw in the
distance the outlines of the land of which it is said, "There is no
night there."
Every tourist mind has its own particular magnet. I do not know what
event in the history of a tourist life most attracts my memory. No one
can ever forget the day when he first gazes upon Jerusalem from the
Mount of Olives; or Damascus seen from the Mount of Mohammed; or the
sunny morning when he rounds the Golden Horn, and Constantinople bursts
on the view.
These are memories which never grow dim; and I am inclined to think
that when a tourist finds himself in a small boat at midnight, drawing
near to the North Cape in the midst of the most gorgeous sunlight ever
seen, he has found a sensation which will be green in his memory to the
day of his death.
In this brief paper I have not found time to be practical. The trip to
the North Cape should be made in June or July; it may be made in August
or September, and in the latter month there is a chance of seeing the
first blushes of the Aurora Borealis. I am much inclined to think that
a winter excursion to the North Cape would be one of the grandest
sensations that the tourist's heart could wish, but of this I am not in
a position to judge.
If my readers are like myself, they never bring one summer trip to a
close before they have arranged in their own minds for the next; and so
I throw out the hint that ere the North Cape shall be scribbled over
with the names of Smith and Jones; ere excursion boats, with Ethiopian
serenaders on board, shall put forth from Hammerfest; ere a big hotel
shall stand upon the summit, and a man shall blow a horn to announce
when "the sun is at its best," it will be well to consider whether a
trip to the North Cape is not worth serious consideration.
IN THE RUSSIAN CAPITAL
SAMUEL S. COX.
["Arctic Sunbeams," by Hon. S. S. Cox, is full of matter of
interest, the author seeing well and telling ably. We give some of
his impressions of St. Petersburg, beginning his journey at the
fortress and city of Cronstadt, the strongly-defended port of the
capital of Russia.]
Leaving the arsenals, dock-yards, wharves, batteries, and ships of
this Gibraltar of the Czar,--and but for which St. Petersburg might
have been burned, like another Moscow, by its own hands, rather than
it should have fallen into those of an invader,--our steamer glides on
what becomes a summer sea of smoothness. The few passengers begin to
appear on deck and stretch their vision for the first glance at the
imperial city. Upon the right, snug amidst its royal greenery, lies the
town of Peterhoff and its domes, minarets, and imperial palace, with
its splendid woods and waters. Our time is opportune for a glorious
sight, for it is sunset, and the sun goes down here at a discreet
hour. Bright dots of burnished gold begin faintly to spangle the sky
in front. They are domes, half hidden by the mist and the distance.
Then a tall spire, also gilded, brilliant and needle-like, pierces
the heavens! It is the Admiralty spire, or perhaps that of the Church
of the Fortress, the Westminster of Russia, the mausoleum of its dead
kings. A few moments, and St. Isaac's Church, the St. Peter's of
Russia, looms up in majestic and stupendous proportions. Its copper
dome is surrounded by four others, all ablaze, like burnished gold,
and surmounted by the gilded Greek cross which towers aloft, above the
bronze saints and angels which people its architraves and its corners,
its roofs and its pillared granite cupola! Beneath it is a city whose
roofs of varied hue cover almost a million of people; a city the
outgrowth from a swamp in less than two hundred years.
We enter the Neva, whose divided waters flow in canals and lagoons
between grand pavements and superb palaces. At length we are
moored--alas! how soon the beatific vision vanishes!--amidst the
traffic and troubles of trade. We are to undergo a search, the first
yet made with rigor since our journey began. Nor can I complain of
this rigor. Recent events make police regulations here necessarily
stringent. But was it not a little humorous to see the long-robed
customs officers scrutinize the heterogeneous matters in our trunks?
Nothing was found contraband but--what think you?--New York journals!
We had received a mail at Stockholm, and expected to read up fully
in St. Petersburg. Some dozen of these journals lay in a pile in my
wife's trunk. It would have done you good to see the leonine voracity
with which these papers were seized. Who was it that talked of the
thousand tongues of the press, clearer far than the silver trumpet of
the jubilee,--louder than the voice of the herald at the games? These
tongues had not a word of protest; the music of their trumpet was
frozen like that of the veracious traveller. Out of the bundle tumbled
an engraving of Charles XII., the old enemy of Russia! Did I tremble
for the ominous spectre of this dead madcap of Sweden? The courteous
officer handed it back with a gracious smile to my wife, who reached
for the rest of the bundle, while her face flushed at the indignity to
and the confusion of her domestic arrangements. But, with a hasty push
and an impetuous "Niebt! Niebt!" (No! no!) our papers were confiscated
to the state. The _Sun_ would not go down in this land; the _Tribune_
was a voiceless oracle; the _World_ ceased to "move after all;" the
_Times_ were out of joint, and the _Express_ came to a dead halt! But
all this had its compensations; for soon we cross the great bridge, and
are housed in the Hôtel d'Angleterre, where though no papers were found
in our expected mail, plenty of news as to the President, and the land
we love, were found in letters, and these twelve days only from New
York.
There shine into my windows, in dazzling glitter, the copper domes of
that marvel of cathedrals, St. Isaac's, which we saw from afar, upon
whose sides and pedestals, encamping night and day about us, are the
angels of this edifice of beauty! The guns of the citadel thunder out
the memory of this, the birthday of the Empress of this vast empire;
and, in spite of all ominous auguries to the contrary, we sojourn
in peace and safety in this city of beauty and bazaars, palaces and
pigeons, monuments and minarets, domes and deviltry, ceremonies and
cemeteries, armies and assassinations!
Why does everybody, except the Russians, call this city St. Petersburg?
It was not named after St. Peter, but Peter the Great. It is a
magnificent city of palaces and wide avenues. Its very hospitals and
barracks are palatial, and there is no narrowness to any thoroughfare.
Its domes, where not painted blue with golden stars, or green, are
gilded, and make the city seem like a Constantinople new-risen upon the
North. In fact, with its canals and rivers, its streets, columns, and
palaces, its churches, and their outside and inside decorations, St.
Petersburg combines in itself and in its vistas, in its plan and its
magnificence, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, and Constantinople. If it were
not stucco on the yellow houses, if it were only solid stone, how much
more impressive would be its mighty and superb aspect! Only one palace
is of granite, and but one church, St. Isaac's, of marble.
The energy which has reared such a city out of a bog in less than two
centuries betokens the one-man energy which its founder inspired and
illustrated. Still, St. Petersburg, as a look from an elevation will
show, unless it be approached as we approached it, by the gulf and
river, is a vast plain, if not a swamp. The Neva saves it. It is a
splendid river, and makes its delta where the city stands. It is a city
of islands, connected by beautiful bridges. Red granite faces the banks
and makes the quays solid structures. Everything is colossal like the
empire. The informing genius of the male gender is Peter the Great, and
of the other gender Catherine II. If these sovereigns were insane, and
they were very peculiar for Russia, more insanity is desirable among
the princes of the earth. Peter opened this city, as he said, for a
window for Russia to look out of into civilized Europe. Peter was a
useful emperor for Russia and his time, although he did many diabolical
things.
[Mr. Cox ventured upon a witticism, in consequence of which he
was mistaken for Mark Twain, whose peculiar vein of humor seems
to have made its mark on the Russian guide. He proceeds to give
his opinion of Russian humor.]
The Russian humor is like that of Byron, which Edgar Poe said was too
savage to be laughed at. Some one calls it grotesque savagery; and
illustrates it by the freaks of Russian princes and czars. John the
Terrible thought there was no church like that of St. Basil, and put
out the architect's eyes to end any future work of that gifted artist.
Peter the Great proposed to hang the lawyers in his realm. He thought
one was too much. There is a story of the Empress Anne, who married
off her favorite dwarf or fool in an ice palace and gave them an icy
marriage-bed, where they froze to death. This I have seen pictured in
fine color and delineation. It was a Russian pleasantry. Catherine II.
slaughtered many of the men whom she did not love--out of a vagary of
fun. Most of the people here hold their revels in graveyards. Peter
stuffed the skin of one of his favorite servants--a tall fellow--and
put him in a museum. Paul issued a ukase against shoestrings and round
hats. He was fond of colors, and had fantastic hues painted on bridges
and gates. It is hardly mirthful to make an eagle out of gun-flints
and swords, or portray a group in heaven of Russians looking down on
Jews, Germans, and negroes. But this is Muscovite merriment. In the
Moscow markets the slaughtered animals are stuffed with sawdust and
look odd. It is said of the Emperor Paul that he dug up the bones of
those who murdered his father to pulverize them and blow them to the
winds. He arrested an Englishman for not taking off his hat to Royalty,
and ordered him to wear magnifying-glasses. This was jolly but not
exceptional, for the Russian is not adept in making genial fun. The
climate is not genial.
[After seeing something of St. Petersburg on foot, he took a
carriage,--whose characteristics he thus describes:]