Part 4

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!

R. C.

PLAN FOR MAINTAINING THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE LABOURING-CLASS.

It has often occurred to us, and we have once or twice hinted at the idea in the Journal, that the working-classes might make a provision for themselves in times of want, whether occasioned by failure of employment or natural disability through disease or old age, if they could be induced to agree to a system of stoppages like that which has existed for ages in the mercantile navy for the support of Greenwich Hospital. We find that, in 1843, probably before the date of any reference of ours to the subject, though unknown to us, Mr David Milne, a patriotic country gentleman of Scotland, and member of the Scottish bar, made a suggestion to this effect to the commissioners who conducted the Poor-Law inquiry in Scotland. His idea was this:--Let some small sum, say sixpence a month, be deducted from the amount of wages under a law to that effect, and thrown into a fund upon which every contributor would have a claim. He conceived that, in five years, so much would be accumulated, that the managers might begin to give support to any number under a twentieth part of the original contributors. Some one had suggested to Mr Milne that it might be well if the law taxed the masters to an equal extent for the benefit of the fund; but he rejected this idea, on the ground of its injustice, and because it would induce employers to be less anxious to carry on their works in unfavourable times for the sake of giving bread to their people. 'It is also to be considered,' says Mr Milne, 'that the duty of sixpence a month for each workman would, in ordinary times, when trade is prosperous, and labourers in demand, actually fall upon the employers, because the natural competition of trade would make up for the deduction of duty by a corresponding rise of wages.' Mr Milne was, however, not unwilling that appeals to, and even a general assessment upon, the rich should be resorted to when the fund failed under the pressure of any unusual calamity.

There cannot, we think, be a doubt that if this plan were practicable, it would be a great improvement in our social economy. At present, the bulk of the working-people of this country have scarcely anything to save them from a state of dependence whenever they fail in getting work, or are no longer fit for it. In Scotland, the able-bodied man who cannot obtain work and wages, has no legal recourse to the poors' funds. In England he has, but accompanied by conditions calculated to lower the man in his own eyes; and therefore the privilege is no true advantage. Even though the poors' funds were more available than they are, the honest workman who wishes to maintain his self-respect can never complacently place his trust in them; for though it is not uncommon to hear individuals in humble life proclaiming that they have a _right_ to them, the fact really is, that these funds are only a product of the humanity and economy of the country, designed to insure that there shall be no class left to misery and the barbarism attending it, but not to interpose between any one and his obligation to gain his own subsistence if possible. In plain truth, he who accepts parochial relief sells away some of his very best rights as a citizen, as well as his dignity as a man; and any one who wishes to exalt either the social or political position of the labouring-class, should desire nothing so much as to see them in the first place superior to all but a remote chance of coming to this wretched expedient. If any feasible and easy-working plan could be devised for enabling them, mainly by sacrifices on their own part, to defy the prospect of becoming paupers, or leaving their children to pauperism, they would certainly have received the greatest boon that any philanthropist could confer upon them.