“That!” said Birger, “that is Polheim’s grave.”
“Do you mean to say that any man was buried there?”
“Not the man himself, only the best part of a man—his reputation. Polheim was an engineer, and when the first idea of making a practicable communication between the Wener and the sea was entertained, he attempted to carry it into effect by burrowing out that hole. If he had succeeded in boring through the rock, he would have accomplished the largest jet d’eau in the world. However, Government were wise enough to put a stop to it, and to employ a cleverer man. Polheim died—it is said of grief,—his body buried at Wenersborg; what became of his soul, I will not take upon me to say; but as for his reputation, there is no doubt about that—that lies buried there.”
“That canal certainly is a wonderful work for a country like yours, where the extent of land is so great, and the produce from it so small.”
“It would have been more wonderful still,” said Birger, “for it would have been done when the country was still poorer, had it not been for the Reformation.”
“The Reformation!” said the Captain. “What, in the name of Tenterden Steeple and the Goodwin Sands, has the Reformation to do with the Gotha Canal?”
“Not much with the canal, but a good deal with Bishop Brask who planned it—the man whom Geijer calls, and very deservedly, ‘the friend of liberty, and the upright friend of his country.’ The present canal, nearly as you see it now, was sketched out in a letter still preserved, which was written in the year 1526, by the Bishop, to stout old Thurè Jensen, whom men called King of East Gothland—that gallant old fellow, who, when he saw how the Diet of Westeras was going, struck up his drums and marched forth, swearing that no man in Sweden should make him heathen, Lutheran, or heretic. Before the Bishop’s scheme could be converted into a reality, stout old Thurè was a headless corpse, and Brask a voluntary exile. But the good which men do, lives after them. Gustavus, who had always respected Brask, and would fain have retained him in his See of Linköping, carried out many of his plans—and in the course of time this, as you see, was carried out too, though it was not for a hundred years or more after the successful king and the deprived bishop had gone to their respective accounts.”
“Jacob has just been giving us another version of the story,” said the Captain, “something about Gefjon and Gylfi.”
“O, the Gylfa-Ginning. Stupid old fool!—that did not happen here, but down in the south, between Sweden and Denmark. So far, however, he is quite right,—at least, if you believe the Prose Edda; the Goddess Gefjon was the first canal maker in Sweden, and the event happened in the reign of King Gylfi.
“Thus it was:—