Across Lake Vettern we sailed through another canal, that led us between charming pastures, musical with the tinkle of cowbells; past fine farms, the red farmhouse making a spot of color on the rich green turf; past gently wooded hills, until we came to magnificent Lake Venern. But we had to get downhill before we reached the Kattegat, for we were one hundred and forty-four feet above the sea, and eleven great locks, each of them one hundred and twelve feet long, is the stairway by which we descended.
Since it took some time for our steamer to go down the hill, we walked instead, for we get many a glimpse from the shore of some of the most beautiful rapids I have ever seen. These are the falls of Trollhätten. Is not that a name that lingers upon your lips and suggests all sorts of trolls and sprites and water nymphs? A tremendous volume of water comes rushing down over the falls, for Europe’s largest lake, as I have before told you, here empties itself, or rather throws itself into the sea. Except for its one majestic fall, Niagara cannot show us anything more exciting in the way of cataracts than Trollhätten. There are five of them, the smallest twenty-five feet high, and the biggest forty-two feet of steep incline, while the river is lined on either side by jagged rocks and high cliffs, past which it comes surging and swirling with deafening roar, hurling its spray high in the air.
I wish the poet-laureate Southey had seen the falls at Trollhätten and had expended some of his adjectives upon them instead of wasting them all upon that little streamlet at the end of Derwent Water when he wrote “How the Waters come down at Lodore.”
At the foot of the falls we took the steamer again for a few hours’ sail down the Göta River, until we came to Sweden’s greatest commercial city, Gotenburg, where steamers are waiting to carry Sweden’s products and Sweden’s emigrants to the ends of the earth.
I fear I may have given you the impression, as I have described the getting up and downhill across Sweden’s broad southern end, of merely a holiday waterway, but the Göta Canal is the great artery of Sweden. Through it, up and down these gigantic steps, pass twelve thousand vessels every year, some of them steamers capable of making an Atlantic voyage, some of them full-rigged schooners or brigs.
The charm of the trip, too, is not by any means confined to the scenery or the ancient castles, for our fellow passengers, by their gentle politeness, do much to make the journey memorable. If you had been with us, they would have taken pains to find out any titles which the American colleges may have incautiously conferred upon your husband, and would always address you as the “Lady Doctor.” They would not think of using the word ni (you) in addressing you. We are told about one of the young lady clerks in a great store in Stockholm who sent word to a gentleman that his son had insulted her. On asking the girl what the insult was, she replied: “He addressed me as ni.” I am speaking now of the way in which chance acquaintances or strangers address one another.
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
The Gorge of the Göta at Trölhatten.