At six o'clock of the morning of the 4th July, Quist duly appeared with
the carriage at the door of the Gotha Kellare. It was a dull, cool,
drizzling morning, and I mentally rejoiced in having, against many
advices, resolved upon a vehicle which could afford me protection from
the elements. My baggage being arranged beside me in the carriage, so
that I could readily command anything I wanted--one of the greatest
of all comforts in solitary travelling--I hastily swallowed the cup
of coffee presented to me in my bedroom--the common custom of the
country--and was soon on the road to Christiania. I observed that two
hardy little horses were yoked to the carriage with rope-traces. Beside
Quist, who drove them, sat a man who was to bring back the cattle,
the first of a long series of such persons whom I was to see in that
situation during my journey, of all varieties of age, from twelve years
to threescore, in all kinds of clothes, from stout _wadmaal_ down to
bare decency. The robust, bulky frame of honest Quist generally made
these people appear like dwarfs by his side. As we drove rapidly along
the swampy plain surrounding Gottenburg, we met an immense number of
small market-carts, driven by peasant men or women, or both, generally
very lightly laden, and going at a trot, the people being usually
seated on a sort of chair, perched on elastic beams passing back at
an angle from the beams of the vehicle, so as to give somewhat the
effect of springs. I felt affected at seeing such a multitude of people
engaged in a labour so uneconomical, and which must consequently
remunerate them so ill; for of course where a man or woman give a day
of their own time, along with a horse's labour, to the business of
selling a single pig or lamb, a few chickens and eggs, or some such
trifling merchandise, the remuneration must be of the most miserable
kind. The poor too often struggle on in this manner, always busy, as
they allege, often working very hard, and wondering that, with all
their exertions, they make so little, when the plain truth is, that
their labour is so ill-directed, or is so uneconomically conducted,
and in the result of their labours they consequently do so little for
their fellow-creatures, that their little gains are exactly what is to
be expected, and what is strictly their due. The very best lesson that
we could teach a poor man, with a view to improving his fortunes, would
be that which led him, as far as possible, to extend his usefulness,
to substitute economical for uneconomical labour, and to concentrate
and divide employments. I beheld, with interest, in this exhibition of
the Swedish peasantry, the first aspect of an economy out of which it
has been the business of the last hundred years to reform the farming
population of my own country.
At the first station, which we reached in little more than an hour,
the horses which had been ordered were in waiting, along with a new
_loon_ of some kind to take care of them. The man in charge of the
used horses was then paid at a rate which appeared nearly equivalent
to threepence-halfpenny per English mile. But something more was
needed--_dricka-pinge_, or drinks-money, as Quist called it. In
England, something like half-a-crown would have been expected. In
Sweden, a few skillings--about twopence of our money--was given,
and most thankfully received. We then set out with our new horses.
The station, it may be remarked, is a place like a carrier's inn.
Travellers of a humble class may stop and refresh at it; but it expects
no gentlemen customers, and is unprepared for their reception. One or
two out of a long series are tolerable places, and it is necessary to
calculate so as to have any needful meals there, instead of the meaner
houses; but even with these better-sort of houses it is necessary to
order meals by the forebud, for a guest is so rare, that they have
no standing arrangements for his reception. My breakfast had been
ordered at the third station. It proved a decent, plain house, with
clean-boarded floors, and a few rude prints along the walls; and, had
there been wheaten bread, the eggs and coffee would have enabled me to
make a tolerable meal.
The country passed over to-day consisted of low rocky hills of soft
outline, with alluvial plains between. It is impossible for any
person of common powers of observation to fail to be struck with
the appearance of the rocky surface presented around Gottenburg and
along the road upon which I was now travelling. All the abruptnesses
and asperities usually seen upon rocks are here ground off: all is
smooth and rounded. Here you see great ridges, resembling the hull
of a ship turned keel uppermost, both in the general form and the
smoothness of surface. There you see great slopes, as straight and
smooth as an ashlar wall. Sometimes a kind of trough or channel is
seen between rising ridges, and of this the sides are usually quite
smooth. In general, there has been a certain weathering of the
exterior, though leaving the general plane--if I may use such an
expression--in its original state. Where the surface has been from any
cause protected from the elements, the smoothing is clearly seen to be
a true mechanical polish; that is to say, not a result of some causes
connected with the formation of the rock, but an effect proceeding from
some external agent which has operated on the rocks after they had
been thrown into their present arrangement as a surface for this part
of the earth. On these preserved surfaces we find striæ or scratches,
evidently a portion of the general operation, whatever it was; and
these striæ, as well as the channellings and ridges, lie in one
direction--namely, _compass_ N. E. and S. W. In numberless instances in
travelling to-day I took out my compass to test this point, where much
struck by the appearances, and the result was invariable. The valley
of the Gotha Elv lies from north to south; but this seems merely to
have exposed it to being impressed with these singular appearances.
There are several hill-faces which may be considered as an exception,
being rough and cliffy, sometimes with a talus of débris descending
from below the cliffy front, as in Salisbury Crags near Edinburgh. In
all such instances the face of the cliff is to the _south-west_; and
where this occurs in a valley, the opposite hill-face is invariably
smooth, with rounded surfaces, showing as if the smoothing agent had
moved from the north-east, failing to press against faces turned away
from that point of the compass, but bearing hard upon such as were
presented towards it. It was most impressive and interesting to read
in these facts so strange a tale of grand preterite operations of
nature. I had seen some of the few and scattered markings of the same
kind which exist on the surface of my own country, but was nevertheless
unprepared for the all but universal grinding to which Sweden has been
subjected. In Scotland one has to seek for the appearances in nooks
of the country; but here they are met at every step. Very often farm
establishments, and the inns at which the traveller stops, are placed
on smoothed plateaux of rock, the place thus acquiring from nature all
the benefit of a paved courtyard, as well as of a perfectly firm and
dry foundation. Often you can trace in these natural pavements the
primitive channellings and striæ, though hob-nails and wagon-wheels
have clattered over them for centuries.
The matter massed up against the smoothed valley-sides has all the
appearance of that of _moraines_ amongst the Alps. A moraine, as must
be known by many persons, is the accumulation of loose matter which
a glacier brings down in its course, and deposits at its base. The
matter seen here, as at the skirts of the Alpine glaciers, is a coarse,
pale, sandy clay, mixed with rough stones of all sizes up to many
tons--mixed confusedly--with here and there little nests of matter,
where the clay and sand have been separated and laid down by water.
Over this matter in some places are stratified sand and gravel, coming
to flat, terraced forms, like sea-beaches. These, however, are rare
objects. The tendency of the whole appearances, in an unprejudiced
mind, is to convey the idea that ice has been the cause of the
main phenomena. That water in any form could have produced them is
utterly inadmissible, though this was the supposition formed by the
first scientific observer, M. Sefstrom. Persons who have only read
descriptions of the appearances may think them explainable upon an
aqueous theory; but if they visit Sweden, and look at the surface with
their own eyes, they must, if open to conviction at all, see that no
such agent could have produced such effects. Only some agent applying
forcibly, pressingly, and with an equable, continuous motion--like a
plane going over a deal, or a plough in a furrow--could have so dressed
the original surface. Such an agent is ICE. The identity of the loose
matter with the moraines of existing glaciers points to the same
conclusion. I therefore believe, with M. Agassiz and others, that ice
has been the means of smoothing the surface of Sweden--ice on a scale
of grandeur beyond what we are accustomed to see; though how such a
glacial sheet was originated, and how it could move across the whole
irregular face of a large country, up hill and down hill, maintaining
over wide provinces one direction, I think it would be difficult to
explain. We perceive clearly the nature of the agent, and we see
this agent still at work upon the earth, though in a limited manner:
the only difficulty is as to the different physical circumstances on
which depended the magnitude of the phenomenon and the manner of its
application. The superficial arrangements of the loose matter speak of
a subsequent dip under water, a fact of which I shall have occasion to
show other evidences.
The country passed over in this day's journey is not interesting to
any but the geologist. It presents only a series of humble-looking
farmsteads, and one or two small and unimportant towns. The farmhouses
bear a general resemblance to those of Switzerland, but want the
overhanging eaves, and are less picturesque, though some are painted
of a red or ochrey colour, which gives a cleanly effect. Unlike
Switzerland, too, barns, byres, and all sorts of store-offices occupy
detached buildings, an arrangement by which the risk of fire is
materially reduced. The scenery, though sufficiently rude, is not
romantic; for the hills are in general only a few hundred feet above
the level of the sea, and their outline has been rendered tame by the
glacial polishing above described. The ice, as I sometimes surprised
my Scandinavian friends by remarking, has been a great enemy to the
picturesque in this region of the earth. Though there is no want of
population, the country is dull. One misses even the little taverns and
huckstry-shops which everywhere give a sort of life to the roadsides
in England and Scotland. In the afternoon we came to a fiord, and
found at its upper extremity the town of Uddevalla, containing from
3000 to 4000 inhabitants. Uddevalla is a name of no small interest in
science, because of a great bed of ancient shells found near it. This,
too, is a kind of object very rare, and only seen on a most limited
scale in the superficial formations of Britain. The effect was novel
and startling when, on the hill-face overlooking the fiord, and at the
height of two hundred feet above its waters, I found something like
a group of gravel-pits, but containing, instead of gravel, nothing
but shells! It is a nook among the hills, with a surface which has
originally been flat in the line of the fiord, though sloping forward
towards it. We can see that the whole space is filled to a great depth
with the exuviæ of marine mollusks, cockles, mussels, whelks, &c. all
of them species existing at this time in the Baltic, with only a thin
covering of vegetable mould on the surface. That surface has been
broken in several places by the peasantry, who dig and carry away these
spoils of ancient seas to spread them over their lands. I feel sure
that some of their excavations are twenty feet deep; yet that is not
the whole thickness of the shell-bed. Of course it is a proof of the
sea and land having formerly been at a different relative level; and
one more convincing could not be desired. I was familiar with this as
a geological fact; but the shell-bed of Uddevalla presented it with a
freshness and liveliness of evidence beyond what I would have expected.
Seeing these shells so entire, so like in all respects to any bed of
shells on the present shore, one looks upon the period antecedent to
the assumption of the present relative level as a thing of yesterday;
the whole series of intermediate events, including, what is probably
but a small part of it, the course of the written history of the human
race, seems concentrated into that brief space which, relatively to the
entire history of the universe, it actually occupies.
My halting-place for the first night was at Quistrom, ten and a-half
Swedish, or about seventy English miles from Gottenburg. This reminds
me to remark that the mile in Sweden, in consequence of an arrangement
adopted during the last century, is fixed at the tenth part of a
geographical degree, which, it will be remembered, is about 69½ English
miles. For such spaces as we require the term _mile_ to designate,
the Swedes speak of quarter and half-quarter miles. The roads exhibit
formidable 'milestones' for each quarter, usually adorned with the
initials of the king under whose reign they were erected. In the whole
of this day's journey I had passed only one gentleman's house--a pretty
place with a park, near Quistrom; and I was afterwards informed that it
belonged to an Englishman. Country-houses, of a character approaching
that of an English gentleman's mansion, are objects scarcely existing
in either Sweden or Norway, except in the immediate neighbourhood of
the larger towns.
At Quistrom I was shown into a large room in an upper floor,
uncarpeted, but strewed thickly with small pieces of pine spray and
juniper bush, the scent of which is abundantly pungent. This is a
description applicable to most public rooms in the country inns of
Scandinavia, the vegetable sprinkling being designed for exactly the
same effect as a sprinkling of yellow sand in British houses of a
humble class. In obedience to the forebud order, a meal was ready to
be laid down for me, consisting of two small dishes of animal food,
with milk, cheese, and hard cakes of rye. Everything was clean, though
homely. A married pair with a child had arrived in a light vehicle
about the same time with me; and as soon as I was done with eating,
I retired to my bedroom, that they might sup in privacy at the same
table. They had a bedroom at one side; I one at the other, a plain
small room, also uncarpeted, and possessing little furniture besides a
small couch of plain deals. I mention these things as characteristic
of the roadside inns all over the country. Here, as everywhere else,
there was snowy bed-linen. I feared the entomology of the house, but
was agreeably disappointed. The stories told of Sweden and Norway in
this respect are surely exaggerations. At least I can say, with a safe
conscience, that of the _cimicidæ_ I never saw one example, and of the
species _pulex irritans_ only two, during the whole time I was in the
country. It is a point not unworthy of notice, for, under different
impressions, I had for many nights much less steady sleep than is
desirable for a traveller.
An early walk next morning showed me the situation of the inn in a
pleasant valley, where a river terminates in a fiord. The river, I was
told, contains abundance of fine fish, and I bethought me that for an
angler such an opportunity of sport, with so cleanly an inn to live in,
might be very attractive. Quist having contrived the night before to
get several forebud notices sent on by a private hand free of expense,
I started at eight o'clock, with some uncertainty as to the conclusion
of my day's journey. The country passed over to-day consisted of low
rocky hills, all smoothed, with spaces between, filled up to various
heights with detrital matter. This matter usually composes flats, and
the ground therefore joins the rocky hills almost as mountain lakes
join the sides of the basins containing them--a feature speaking
significantly of the operations of the sea upon the stuff left at the
conclusion of the glacial action. Contrary to my expectation, very
few boulders appeared upon the hills. Sometimes a rill cuts down the
alluvial flat, and then we see a series of cultivated fields on the
bisected level spaces, frontiered by steep pastoral banks, all in a
flush of wild-flowers. The rounded gray rocky hills; the alluvial
flats, sometimes cultivated, sometimes in moorland; low, gray, stone
enclosures; red wooden houses scattered at wide intervals; now and then
a whitened church, with a red wooden spire, topping a low height--such
were the predominant features of the landscape during this morning's
drive. The people are remarkably civil and inoffensive: not a man or
boy do I pass or meet who does not take off his hat. I feel this as
courtesy, not as servility, and am careful to return each greeting
duly, in order that so amiable a custom may not suffer by me. There
is one singular impediment in travelling: almost every few hundred
yards--though often at very much wider intervals--a gate crosses the
road, being part of the system of farm enclosures, and having a regard
to the exclusion of cattle from the corn-fields. Generally some cottage
child or group of children is ready to run and open the gate for the
approaching vehicle; and for this service a minute coin, such as the
third or sixth of a skilling, is regarded as a rich reward. Where no
such aid is at hand, the charge-taker of the horses has to descend and
throw up the bar. Another novel feature of the roads is the frequent
appearance by the wayside of little posts bearing small boards, which
contain an inscription--as 'Hede, 200 alnar,' 'Hogdal, 134 alnar,' &c.
The explanation is, that the roads in Sweden and Norway are kept up by
the bonder or peasants, each taking charge of some small section near
his farm. The boards show for what piece each is answerable, the space
being indicated in ells. A public officer makes periodical rounds, to
see that each person executes his portion in a satisfactory manner,
and to impose fines where the duty is neglected. This system partakes
of the character of the compulsory furnishing of horses, and imparts
a curious idea of the state of public opinion in these countries
as to personal liberty. It appears that, let there be never such
liberal or democratic forms established on the continent, the state of
individual liberty remains the same: the central government is still
permitted to bandy about the simple subject at its pleasure. And the
oddest consideration is, that, amidst all the democratic struggles and
revolutionary writhings which occasionally take place, no one thinks of
complaining of these trammelments, or getting them corrected.
In the evening I approached a fiord called Swinesund, which forms
the northern limit of Sweden in this direction. At the last station
on the Swedish side an elderly officer-like man came up with great
politeness, and addressed me, first in Swedish, and afterwards in
German. It was his duty to search the baggage of travellers before
they should pass into Norway, though I cannot imagine for what
reason, unless the exaction of a rigs dollar, or some such trifle,
which I paid to save myself from detention, furnish one. At a house
on the Norwegian margin of the fiord something more was paid, my
passport inspected, and my name entered in a book. The tendency on
the continent to petty impositions of this kind is so great, that
here, even between two countries under one sovereign rule, they are
kept up. At this point a bag of Swedish money, with which I had been
furnished at Gottenburg, and with which I was just beginning to become
familiar, ceased to be useful, and a new kind became necessary. Laying
down rigs-gelt dollars and skillings, I had to take up with specie
dollars and marks. A rigs-gelt dollar, I may remark, is equivalent to
13½d. of English money, and the skilling is its forty-eighth part.
Calculations are, however, made in an all but imaginary denomination
called dollars and skillings _banco_, which are as 3 to 2 of the actual
rigs-gelt. The prevalent monies are, in reality, notes of 1, 3, 5
rigs-gelt dollars, and for 8, 12, 16 skillings banco, the smallest of
this paper-money being for 3½d. English. As may readily be imagined,
the threepence-halfpenny note is generally found in no very neat or
cleanly state; yet though it may be a mere clot of dirty paper, not
much different in appearance from a huddled-up spider's web, it will
be preferred by the natives to coin, provided it only retain the
signature of the government banker. In Norway, they have notes for
1 specie dollar (about 4s. 6d. English), 2, 5, and 10 dollars, with
silver marks and half-marks (9d. and 4¼.), and copper skillings. I
need scarcely remark that the plunge into a new money in the course of
continental travel is always a painful thing, and that it is a vexation
which occurs the more frequently the more rapidly you travel. On this
occasion I had had to make acquaintance with three kinds of money in
about a week.
I spent the night at Westgaard, the first station within Norway, and
one somewhat superior to the last. I here observed the first examples
of a piece of substantial furniture very common in the north--namely,
large chests or arks, usually bearing the name of a person, and an
old date in quaint lettering, such as 'Agnes Olsen, 1733.' During the
two previous days the weather had been dull and ungenial. The third
morning proved bright and clear, and I started at an early hour for
Frederickshald with elevated spirits. This place was a few miles out
of the way; but I was anxious to see the scene of the death of that
extraordinary prince who, as Johnson says--
----'left a name, at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, and adorn a tale.'
It was yet scarcely past seven o'clock when we drove into the inn-yard
at this little town. The landlord soon came, and being able to speak
well in French, and a little in English, he proved a most serviceable
ally. I was quickly on my way, under proper conduct, to the scene
of the assassination of poor Carl Tolv. Frederickshald is a neat,
cleanly town, at the head of one of the smaller fiords, and the fort
lies close by, perched upon a rocky eminence of considerable extent,
at the foot of which runs a river, noted for several fine waterfalls.
A painful ascent of two or three hundred feet, along zig-zagging
causeways and fortified walls, brings us to the fortress, which seems
to be now chiefly a mere post for soldiers, like Edinburgh and Stirling
castles. Behind the main buildings is a space of irregular rocky
ground, enclosed within the exterior defences. Here an enclosure of
trees and shrubs, and a little tumulus of stones, one of them bearing
a half-obliterated inscription, marks the spot where Charles XII. was
slain. He had invaded Norway in his usual madcap style; one of his
armies, consisting of 7000 men, had there been literally buried in a
snow-storm; he was now directing in person the siege of this fortress,
when an unknown hand despatched him by a shot which penetrated his
temple (December 11, 1718). He was found dead, but with his sword
half-drawn, as if to defend himself from some enemy, or to punish an
assassin, and it is accordingly believed that the wound was inflicted
by one of his own people. A survey of the ground supports this view
of the matter, as at such a place one does not readily see how the
fatal shot could have come from the fortress. I had afterwards an
opportunity of examining the dress worn at this time by the king, in
the Riddarsholm Church at Stockholm. The plain cocked-hat shows the
hole by which the bullet entered, and the right glove is stained with
blood, as if the unfortunate monarch, under the first impulse of the
moment, had clapped his hand upon the wound.
After breakfast, I took a walk around the town, and very much enjoyed
the views almost everywhere presented, but particularly one from a
noted place within a gentleman's pleasure-grounds. Frederickshald
appears to me a more pleasing and interesting place than the
guide-books allow. In the little park alluded to I found a private
cemetery, containing the graves of eight adults and three infants.
Each grave is a well-defined heap, with turf sides and ends, but a top
of bare earth, on which is laid a single wreath; all the rest of the
ground bare earth. Such is a prevalent style of sepulture in the north;
it has a neat and pretty effect. One likes to see a grave well-defined.
That smoothing of the ground, introduced in some of the improved modern
cemeteries of England, is not, I think, an approvable step. We desire
the 'mouldering heap,' so affectingly significant of what is below, and
so associated with all our old literary ideas upon the subject.
After receiving a lesson in Norwegian money from my intelligent
landlord, Mr Stein, and so many civilities of various kinds, that I
felt ashamed of the small bill which I had to pay, I set out on the
way to Christiania, returning for some miles along the way by which
I had come from Westgaard. As we drove out of the town, I was, as a
stranger, honoured with a sufficient quantity of observation by the
people. To add to the fracas produced by the carriage, a foal came
clattering along by our side, apparently under a filial mistake as
to one of our horses. Presently a cart was heard making a furious
rattle along the stones behind us, as if still further to make my poor
equipage an object of public attention. It was the mamma of the foal,
who, having missed her progeny in the market-place, was now anxious to
recover the lost one: there she came, with mouth distended, and eyes
glaring, the whole aspect expressing the utmost excitement, and saying
as plainly as words could have spoken it, 'What's all this?--taking
away my child!' The whole was so vividly like human affairs, that I
felt inclined to stop and apologise for our unintentional concern in
the elopement; but Quist settled the matter more summarily by a smart
application of his whip to the haunches of our undesired attaché. It
may be remarked that in Norway the foal is often allowed to accompany
its parent, even in coach-travelling. I have seen it come the whole
stage, never missing any opportunity afforded by a pause of our machine
to come up and indulge in the mode of nutrition appropriate to its age.
Horses are altogether less under strict rule in the north than with
us, and it appears to me as if they consequently were more _natural_
in their conduct. For one thing, they are eminently social with one
another. In the course of a long stage over a thinly-peopled country,
if we come at length to a park where a horse is feeding, even I could
almost say though out of sight, our own pachyderms are sure to get
up a great skirl of recognition, just as much as to say, 'How are
you?--how are you?' My predecessor, Mr Laing, alleges that they have a
rational way of eating not observed in the horses of less democratic
countries--taking first a quantity of their hay or corn, and then
a drink; but I cannot say I ever could observe them acting in this
bite-and-sup manner. Of their amazing steadiness, sureness of foot, and
hardiness, abundant evidence is presented to every traveller.
In the middle of the day we arrived at the brink of the river Glommen,
a copious stream, which contains the drainage of a large district in
the centre of Norway, and which is here remarkable for a cascade of
great grandeur. The fall is at a place about an English mile above the
ferry: the flood pours in one mass through a narrow channel, and makes
a descent of about seventy feet. It would be an unexceptionably fine
sight but for the details of an enormous timber-sawing and exporting
establishment which press in upon its beauties, and usurp not a few of
its most romantic points. The river runs fourteen English miles below
the waterfall, but so gently, that ships come up for the timber; and
the river is there accordingly an active commercial scene. I observed
at the falls specimens of the smoothed and dressed rocks, over which
the water streamed in an oblique direction--a fact than which nothing
could be more convincing as to the incompetency of water to produce the
effects attributed to the ice. The country is here low, and not marked
by any features of grandeur. There is an alluvial plain of the most
absolute flatness for fully a mile in every direction around the ferry;
and from the measurements which I made (starting from the surface of
the river at that point), I suspect this to be identical in elevation
above the sea with the terrace at Elsinore. This is, however, a point
which must be left for determination to the native inquirers.
We stopped for the night at Moss, a town on the Christiania Fiord,
where my servant and I had each an evening and morning meal, with
lodging, at a charge of about six shillings. Yet this was a good large
house, very tolerably furnished. A small silver coin (value about
5d.) laid in the hardened palm of the blithesome lass who served as
an attendant in all capacities made her the happiest of the happy. As
a serving-girl in Denmark, Sweden, or Norway, only gets about 30s. a
year of wages, it may readily be imagined that even so small a gratuity
as this is a great prize to her. It is necessary, however, to be
careful to give such a gratuity directly to the person for whom it is
designed, as it will not otherwise reach its destination. At this place
there are alluvial terraces at various elevations above the sea, and
precisely resembling the ancient sea-margins of the British coasts.
A circumstance worthy of note occurred in the business of measuring
their elevations, which I did with a regular levelling apparatus. The
sea is here presented in two detached bays, embracing a peninsula of
several miles in extent, yet approaching within two hundred yards of
each other, with only the division of a low isthmus. One of these bays
appeared by my survey as 0.9 foot above the level of the other. The
cause was in the wind, which blew up the one bay, and down the other.
There remained only a forenoon's journey to Christiania. As we
approached this capital, there was no observable improvement in the
appearance of the country; no better houses, no trimmer or larger
fields, no smarter-looking people; the same rough and homely character
over all things. The roads are made of the sand and gravel found
everywhere near their borders; no cuttings anywhere for improved
gradients. A rise of 1 in 5 is not uncommon when any of the rocky
ridges between the plains has to be crossed. Two miles from Christiania
we come to the brow of a hill, whence we see the bright white city
with its blue and red-tiled roofs lying below at the head of its
fiord, backed by green slopes ascending to the pine-clad hills. The
descent of this hill is terrible, from the extreme steepness of the
road, especially at its somewhat sharp turnings. Having a geologist's
climometer in my pocket, I measured the slope in some places with
all possible care, and found it actually on an angle of 16 degrees,
implying a rise of 1 in 3½ feet. I deemed this a strange sight so near
one of the capitals of Europe; but I must do the Norwegians the justice
to say that a better road is in the course of being made.
On the two last days' journeys we met many parties of Norwegian
infantry on their march or exercising. They are a good-looking
soldiery, neatly dressed in white duck-trousers and green frock-coats,
with burnished-leather hats rising to a metal peak, each bearing the
arms of Norway--a ramping lion holding a battle-axe. As to this ensign,
by the way, though gratifying to the national vanity, and poetically
conveying the idea which its originators intended, it belongs to a
class which cannot be scientifically contemplated without a shock. The
philosophical zoologist reflects on the adaptations of the natural
organs, and knowing the very peculiar formation of the anterior
extremities of the feline family--so well contrived for clutching and
tearing a prey, so useless for every other kind of prehension--he
cannot endure the idea of one of these animals being supposed to hold
a weapon only adapted to the hand of man. Heralds, if they could think
of anything beside their own profession, should study these things!