Through Scandinavia to Moscow. Edwards William Seymour

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СКАЧАТЬ ancient tavern, the Sleibot, in Elsinore, cared for us most comfortably. We were given a large room looking out over the waters of the Sund, with wide small-paned casemented windows, and a great porcelain stove and giant wooden bedstead. For breakfast we had fresh herring, the fish which will now form the chief diet of Helsinoere for many a month, and more of the good Danish coffee. The bill for lodging and breakfast was seven kroner (about $1.90) for us two.

      The dear old couple were on hand to see us off, and waved farvel as we boarded the immense ferryboat which takes on, if needful, an entire train, but usually only the baggage cars, for through travel to Swedish and Norwegian points. The boats are long and wide and strong, and smash their way through the floes of drifting ice the winter through, for this outlet of the Baltic is rarely frozen solid for any length of time. The four-miles passage is made in twenty minutes, and after we got under way, it was not long before even massive Kronborg faded upon the view, and we were making fast to the pier at Helsingborg, in Sweden.

      In England, owing to the smallness of the tunnels and the present cost of enlarging them, the railway management is compelled to keep to the ancient diminutive style of carriage first introduced sixty years ago. But here, in these northern lands, where railway building is of more recent date, although the gauge is the same as in Britain, the carriages are half as large again, and are many of them almost as long as our American cars, so that the riding in them is much easier than there. And in Norway I have already seen cars which, except for being shorter, were exactly like our own.

      We traveled first along the sea, then through a flat country. There were scores of sails upon the Kattegat, a multitude of ships and barques and brigs, schooners and sloops, and small fishing smacks, and larger fishing luggers going far out upon the North Sea. There were also many black hulks in tow of big tugs carrying coal to the Baltic cities, and steamers bound for English and German ports and even for America. The waters were alive with the busy traffic.

      We passed wide meadows and much grass land. Cows were feeding upon these fields, red cows mostly, with herders to watch over them. The cows were tethered each to a separate iron pin sunk in the ground, all in a single row; and thus they eat their way across an entire meadow, – an animated mowing machine. Now and then we returned to the shore of the sea, passing some fishing village nestled along the rocks, or we rolled through forests of small birches, pines and spruce.

      In the same compartment with ourselves sat a couple of young Germans. They were much interested in each other. I noticed that the lady’s rings were most of them shining new, and one, a large plain gold ring, was in look particularly recent and refulgent. H came to the same conclusion also at about the very same moment. The two were surely a bridal pair. And they talked German, and looked out across us through the wide windows as though we were never there. So I spoke to my wife in good United States, and we agreed that these two were newly wed. And then the bride’s noble face and fine brown eyes appealed to me, and I declared her to be the loveliest woman I had yet seen this side the sea. The while she and her Mann still conversed in low, soft German. But it now seemed to me that they looked out across us with a kindlier feeling in their eyes and, in a surreptitious way, the German beauty was peeping at the fine large diamond on H’s left hand (the wedding ring she had already succeeded in making look dull and old). At Goteborg (Gothenburg) our train drew up for half an hour’s wait. Here that portion of it going to Stockholm would be cut loose from our own, and another engine would take us to the north. Along with most of the other passengers the young German and I also got out, leaving the two ladies in the car. At the counter of the big lunch room I watched the ever hungry Norsemen stowing away cold fish and cheese, and was in somewhat of a dilemma what to take, when the German husband of the lovely bride came up to me in a most friendly way, and suggested that I would enjoy a certain sort of fish and thin brown cake, which seemed to be one of the popular objects of attack by the voracious multitude. And he spoke to me in perfect English of the educated sort. He had evidently quite understood my flattering comments upon his bride, and was now my fast friend. I did not show surprise, but took his hint, and afterward we strolled up and down the platform, munching our snack, while he told me that he was a “barrister from Cologne.” “Yes, on his wedding trip.” He had “learned English in the German schools,” he said, and had “never been in England or America.” His wife, he admitted, “could not speak English,” but “could read it and understand it when others talked!” He told me of the German courts, and of his long years of study before he was admitted to the bar. When they left us a few miles further on, for their way lay up through the lakes and forests of Sweden, we parted as old friends, and they promised to visit us if ever they should come across the sea; our unsuspecting admiration had won their hearts!

      About 4 p. m., we dined at the small station of Ed, our first example of Swedish railway dinner-serving on an elaborate scale. The train was a long one. There were many passengers. The fish and cheese consumed at Gothenburg was long since shaken down. We were genuinely hungry. But when the train came to a stop there was no rush to the restaurant, nor attempt of every man to get ahead of the one in front of him. The passengers took their leisure to get out, and walked deliberately toward the big eating room. The food was set upon a long central table. There were hot soups, hot boiled fowl, hot meats, an abundance of victuals, cold and salt. There were piles of plates, of napkins and of knives and forks. Everyone helped himself, and ate standing or carried his food to a little table and sat at ease. This latter plan we followed. Rule: Eat all you will, drink as much beer as you desire, take your own time, the train will wait, and when you are quite satisfied pay a single kroner (twenty-seven cents). There is no watching to see how much you may consume. You eat your fill, you pay the modest charge, you go your deliberate way. However slow you may be the train will wait!

      We now traversed a barren country of marshy flats; with skimp timber, chiefly small birch and spruce. Toward dusk it was raining hard. The long twilight had fairly begun when we crossed the Swedish border and a few miles beyond stopped at Fredrikshald, where is a famous fortress against the Swedes, besieging which, King Charles XII was killed. Here a customs’ officer walked rapidly through the car, asked a few questions and passed us on. Our trunks had been marked “through” from Helsinoere, so we had no care for them until we should arrive in Kristiania. But that there should be still maintained a customs’ line between the sister kingdoms of Norway and Sweden, which are ruled by a common King, may perhaps surprise the stranger unacquainted with the peculiar and somewhat strained relations ever existing between these kindred peoples.

      For many hundreds of years (since 1380) Norway had been a province of Denmark. Her language and that of the Dane had grown to be almost the same, the same when written and printed, and differing only when pronounced. But in 1814, the selfish powers of the Holy Alliance handed over Norway to the Swedish crown as punishment to Denmark for being Napoleon’s friend, and threatened to enforce their arbitrary act by war. So Norway yielded to brute force, and accepted the sovereignty of Napoleon’s treacherous Marshal Bernadotte, the Swedish King, but she yielded nothing more, and to this day has preserved and yet jealously maintains her own independent Parliament, her own postal system, her own separate currency and her Custom Houses along the Swedish line. And you never hear a Norwegian speak of any other than of the “King of Sweden.” “He is not our King,” they say, “we have none.” “We are ruled by the King of Sweden, but Norway has no[Pg 45][Pg 46] King.” Cunning Russia, it is said, cleverly spends many rubles in order that this independent spirit shall be kept awake, and the war force of Sweden thereby be so much weakened. Russia might even to this day be able to nourish into war this ancient feud between the kindred breeds, if it were not that in her greed of power she has shown the cloven foot. The horror of her monstrous tyranny in Finland already finds echo among the Norwegian mountains. “We are getting together,” a Norwegian said to me. “We have got to get together, however jealous we may be of one another. We must, or else the Russian bear will hug us to our death, even as now he is cracking the ribs of helpless Finland.” And when I suggested that little Denmark should be taken within the pale, and a common Scandinavian Republic be revived in more than ancient force to face the world, he declared that already a movement toward this end was set afoot, and only needed a favorable opportunity to become a living СКАЧАТЬ