CHAPTER V
JOURNEYING ACROSS SWEDEN; STOCKHOLM
Stockholm, Sweden,
August 20, 191—
My dear Cynthia:
I do not mind admitting now that I was distinctly disappointed with my first glimpses of the Swedish landscape. You probably noticed that in my last letter I ‘demned it by faint praise.’ But since writing that letter I have crossed the peninsula from Gothenburg to Stockholm, and I have found that—at least so far as the eye will reach on either side of the railroad track—Sweden is far more beautiful than I had ever dreamed. It was such a satisfaction to the Swedish half of me to learn that.
The country was woodsy and rolling and rocky all the way; and it was more than that. As we journeyed, conifers, particularly fir and pine, were added to the dainty white-limbed birches and the oaks. Between Lakes Vennern and Vettern for many miles we passed through dense forests, largely evergreens. The trees pressed closely in on both sides of the track, so that I could almost touch their plumy green arms with my hand. There were plenty of rocks, too, but in the form of sightly crags or rugged bluffs which were really a contribution to the picture. Here and there were houses, mostly the typical dark red with white trimmings, which added a pleasant bit of color, peeping from between the openings in the forests, or well exposed and surrounded by fields. In some of the fields were men plowing with teams of oxen; in others were sheaves of rye or oats stuck on long, pointed stakes to dry. These spitted sheaves in some cases bore ghostly, grotesque resemblance to human beings. The railroad stations were mostly of red brick, with neat grounds frequently planted to flowers.
I have not yet mentioned the water. That deserves a paragraph by itself. If I had not already given you to understand that between Gothenburg and Stockholm there are houses and fields and forests and crags, I should be tempted to state that there is water everywhere. While this is not strictly true, water is astonishingly plentiful and is all mixed up with everything else. It has been said that when, in the act of creation, Jehovah parted the water from the land, he forgot Sweden. It certainly looks as if someone had forgotten. There are ditches between the fields to draw off the water; and lakes, large and small, from which brimming rivers flow, are scattered about in the most extravagant manner. Near Stockholm the lakes are closer together than at the Gothenburg end of the line. With their framing of gray, rocky bluffs and tall, dark forests reflected on their silvery surfaces, occasionally dotted with water lilies in full bloom, these lakes are charming indeed. Swedes have been fond of water since Viking times, you know. And last Friday they seemed to be enjoying their lakes to the full; some were swimming, and splashing and diving, like genuine amphibians; others were in boats—proud little steamers which made the reflected landscape tremble and quiver as they puffed and snorted about with a self-important air, and simple rowboats which glided modestly over the mirrored landscape. The train grazed the margin of one lake in which was a boat-load of laughing white-kerchiefed girls, rowed by a brown-armed young man, laughing, too. They were gathering pond lilies.
As the train entered the city by way of a bridge across the Gotha Canal, we noted a little Gothenburg steamer making its way between the green banks. It had taken about forty-eight hours longer than we to make the trip to the capital. But the trip by canal is a most delightful one, I have been told.
When I used the pronoun we in the foregoing, I did not have in mind the sum total of passengers who traveled in the same train with me from Gothenburg to Stockholm, but rather a woman who occupied the same compartment as I, on the train.