“Well, it is very true, as you will confess, if ever I get you to Stockholm; is it not, Count Dahlgren?” addressing the artillery officer. “You dine with us, of course; in with you, and wash off the stains of war, which are pretty visible at present. You have not more time than you know what to do with. If we do sail to-morrow, we will make a night of it to-night.”
“Like our first night at Mosse Eurd?”
“No, hang it, no; not so bad as that;—that was all very well for the men, but we do not make such beasts of ourselves in this country. I have told them, though, to put plenty of champagne in ice, and to provide the best claret they have got; we will be merry—and wise, if possible.”
“And if not possible?”
“Why, then, the merry without the wise.”
Whether mirth, or wisdom, or a judicious mixture of the two prevailed that evening at the Prinds Karl, need not be related; but the next morning saw the party on the clean white deck of the elegant little river steamer Daniel Thunberg, dashing along its broad, still stream, between rows of feathering rushes, sometimes so tall as to eclipse the still flat and uninteresting country beyond them. Ducks there were, in such numbers, that the fishermen half repented their engagement with Moodie; and Jacob, to whom every spot was familiar, kept up an incessant chorus of regrets, pointing out here a spot where he had made a fortune with the långref, having hauled up a three-pound eel on every hook,—there a corner where he had caught a pike so big he could not lift it into the boat, but was obliged to tow it astern all the way to Gotheborg,—and there a bay in the rushes in which he had bagged five swans, eight geese, and more ducks than he could count, at a single shot,—with as many more stories, equally veracious, as he could get people to listen to; and in fact, could be stopped by nothing short of that grand event in a Swedish day, dinner, which, announced by the steamer’s bell, was served with great magnificence in the saloon.
These little steamers form as luxurious a conveyance as can be imagined; they are galley-built, that is to say, the quarter deck is two or three feet higher than the waist; the after part is divided into ten or twelve little private cabins, each possessing its own port, and each furnished with its two sofas and its table; the fore part contains the saloon, or common cabin. They do not carry very powerful engines, but they burn wood, and are as clean and as free from disagreeable smells as if they were sailing vessels.
At the locks of Lilla Edet, where a reef comes across the river, forming a low but very picturesque fall, the fine scenery commences. The fall itself is singular. The water of the Gotha, fresh from the great lake of Wenern, which acts as an enormous cesspool, is as clear and bright as that of the Torjedahl, but with ten times its volume; it slips off the smooth ledge of rocks as if it were falling over a step; the ledge off which it slips is seen through it as distinctly as if it were enclosed in a glass case, for the water preserves its unbroken transparency till it reaches the bottom, and then spreads out into a broad border of foam, like a fan with swansdown fringe.
From this point, a very perceptible difference was remarkable in the run of the current, which retarded considerably the way of the steamer through the belt of highlands which separates the low tract bordering the sea-coast from the higher level of Wenersborglan; and it was not till past five, that the low rumbling, earth-shaking sound of the great falls began to tremble on the ear.