A shrub called the trolsee is a representation of the same goddess Seeta, and is every year married with great ceremony to a sacred stone called Saligram, a rounded pebble supposed to represent the good Vishnu, of whom Ram was an incarnation. On one occasion described, the procession attending this august ceremony consisted of 8 elephants, 1200 camels, and 4000 horses, all mounted and elegantly caparisoned. Above 100,000 persons were present at this pageant, at which the little pebble was mounted on the leading elephant, and thus carried in state to his tree goddess. All the ceremonies of a Hindoo marriage were gone through, and then the god and goddess were left to repose together till the next season in the temple of Sudora.
Indian trees, however, it must be said, are, from all accounts, much more worthy of the honours of superstition than those of less fervid climes. A traveller mentions an instance of the 'sentient principle' occurring among the denizens of an Indian forest. Two trees, he tells us, of different kinds, although only three feet apart, had grown to the height of fifty or sixty feet, when one of them took the liberty of throwing out a low branch in such a way as to touch the trunk of his neighbour, and thus occasion much pain and irritation. 'On this the afflicted tree in turn threw out a huge excrescence, which not only enveloped the offending branch, but strangled it so completely as to destroy it utterly; the ends of the deadened boughs projecting three or four feet beyond the excrescence, while the latter was carried on a distance of three feet across to the shaft of the tree, so as to render all chances of its future movement wholly impossible!' This appears to our traveller to display as much forethought and sagacity as taking up an artery for aneurism, or tying splints round a broken bone.
But in a country where trees are the objects of such veneration, and where those that are neither holy nor sagacious are admitted without scruple to the best arborical society, how comes it that the beautiful, the umbrageous, and the beneficent tamarind is looked upon as the outlaw of the plantation, the pariah of the forest? This is a very puzzling circumstance, and one that, in the present state of our knowledge, we can only set down to the caprice and ingratitude of man.
[TRACINGS OF THE NORTH OF EUROPE.]
CHRISTIANIA TO LAURGAARD.
A land journey of 334 English miles, which usually occupies five or six days, was now before me. The road passes along one of the finest as well as most extensive valleys in Norway, and is further distinguished by crossing the celebrated range of mountains called the Dovre Field [Dovre pronounced Dovra], which may be called the backbone of the country, as the Grampian range is that of the Scottish Highlands. Along this road, as usual, there is a series of stations, but none of them is of so high a character as to present the luxury of wheaten bread. One of my duties, therefore, on the last day of my stay in Christiania, was to obtain a bag of biscuits for use on the way. Being anxious to secure a passage in a steamer which was to leave Trondheim on the 18th July, I allowed seven days for the journey, and started at one o'clock on the 11th, thus allowing an extra day for any accidental delay upon the road.
The first two or three stages being across certain intermediate valleys, we have much up-hill and down-hill work along roads by no means good. It was pitiable to see the little heavy-laden carts of the peasantry toiling up the steep ascents, each with its forked pike trailing behind it, on which to rest the vehicle, while the horse should stop a few minutes at a time to recover breath and strength. Many were conducted by women; and I could not but admire the hardy, independent air of these females, as they sat, whip in hand, urging their steeds along, though, as might be expected from such a rough out-of-door life, their figures exhibit little of the attractions of their sex. At many places I found rock-surfaces with dressings generally in a north and south direction, being that of the valleys. It is not unworthy of remark that two of the rivers are crossed by modern wooden bridges, where a pontage is paid; and these were the only charges approaching to the character of a toll to which I was subjected throughout the whole of my travels in Scandinavia. Of the valleys, one is full of sandy, a second of clay terraces, marking some decided difference in the former submerged condition of the two districts. On passing into a third at Trygstad, we find a vast plateau composed of clay below and pure sand above, bearing magnificent pine-forests, and which extends, without any intermission, to the foot of the Miösen Lake. It would be a curious study to any native geologist to examine this formation, and to trace its source, and the circumstances under which it was deposited. There are remarkable generalities about such things. Instructed by what I had seen in Scotland, as soon as I observed the valley filled with sand up to a certain height a few miles below where I knew a lake to be, I mentally predicted that this formation would terminate at the foot of the lake, and that there would be no terraces on the hill-sides above that sheet of water. Such proved to be the case.
A short stage before reaching the foot of the Miösen Lake, we pass one of those objects so extraordinary in Norway—a country mansion; that is to say, a handsome house adapted for the residence of a family in affluent circumstances. It is called Eidsvold, and was once the property of a family named Anker, but now belongs to the public, in consequence of the interesting distinction conferred on it in 1814, when a national assembly sat here and framed the constitution under which the country is now so happily placed. The purchase of this house by a national subscription is an agreeable circumstance, as it marks that deep and undivided feeling which the Norwegian people entertain regarding their constitution—a feeling perhaps more important than the character of the constitution itself, as it is what mainly secures its peaceful working. This constitution has now stood for thirty-five years, with a less amount of dissent and dissatisfaction on the part of the people than has happened in the case of any other experiment of the same kind in modern Europe. It is entitled to be regarded as a successful experiment; and, as such, of course may well be viewed with some interest by the rest of Europe, especially at a time when so many political theories are on their trial, and so few seem likely to stand good. The main fact is the election, every three years, of a body called the Storthing, which separates itself into an Upper and Lower House, enacts and repeals laws, and regulates all matters connected with the revenue. The royal sanction is required for these laws; but if the people are bent upon any measure disapproved of by the king, they have only to re-introduce and pass it in two more successive Storthings, when it would become law without the royal assent. Thus the Norwegians may be said, in Benthamian language, to minimise the monarchical principle. But how is the Storthing constituted? The right of voting depends on a low property qualification. The qualified voters in small districts elect persons called election-men, who again meet by themselves, and elect, usually, but not necessarily, out of their own number, representatives of larger districts, who in turn form the Storthing, the whole numbers of which are somewhat under a hundred. It is a system of universal suffrage, exclusive only of the humblest labouring-class. It may be said to be a government of what we call the middle-classes, and all but a pure democracy; but it is essential to observe that the bulk of the people of Norway are of the kind which we recognise as a middle-class, for of hereditary nobility they have none, and the non-electors are a body too humble in circumstances, and too well matched in numbers by the rest, to have any power for good or evil in the case. There are other important considerations: land is held in Norway, not upon the feudal, but the udal principle, which harmonises much better with democratic forms; there being no right of primogeniture, estates are kept down at a certain moderate extent; in the general circumstances of the country, there can be no massing of wealth in a few hands, and therefore little of that species of influence. The apparently ultra-liberal system of Norway being thus adapted to many things more or less peculiar to the country, it may have attained a success here which it would not obtain elsewhere, or at least not till a proper groundwork had been laid in social arrangements. This is a proposition which seems to derive much support from recent political failures in Germany, Italy, and, shall we add, France? The abrupt decreeing of a democratic constitution, in supersession of a government which has been absolute for centuries, is seen to be an absurdity, though one, perhaps, which nothing but experiment could have demonstrated.
It was still far from night when I arrived at Minde, at the foot of the Miösen Lake. This sheet of water, sixty-three English miles in length, terminates here in a curve formed in the sandy plateau, through which its waters have made for themselves a deep trench. The little inn nestles under the steep bank on the west side of the outlet, commanding from its back-windows a view along the lake. As the point where the river must be ferried, and whence the steamers start on their course along the lake, it is a place of some importance. It has even been proposed to have a railway from Christiania to Minde, and the ground has been surveyed by Mr Robert Stephenson; but this is not likely to be realised for some years to come. I found the porch of the inn filled with guests enjoying their pipes; two or three of them were officers, and one of these, I was told, had the duty of superintending the post stations of a certain district. Amongst others was one of those dirty young men of the student genus who are so prevalent on the continent; travelling with only a little satchel slung from their shoulders, and thus evidently unprovided with so much as a change of linen or a set of night-clothes, yet always sure to be found lugging along a tobacco-pipe half as big as themselves, together with a formidable pouch of tobacco depending from a button-hole. The inn consisted of two floors, in the lower of which was a good-sized public room, gay with prints of the royal family and such-like; from this on one side went off two bedrooms; on the other adjoined a kitchen, and other family apartments. Stables, sheds, and storehouses of various denominations stood near by, so as to form what Allan Ramsay calls a rural square. It was a comfortable establishment, and the females who conducted it were respectable-looking people. There was also a landlord, who was always coming in, apparently under an anxiety to do something, but never did it. I had a good meal served up in the public room, and enjoyed the evening scene on the lake very greatly, but found the occasional society of the other guests in this apartment disagreeable, in consequence of their incessant smoking, and their habit of frequent spitting upon the floor. It is seldom that I find associates in inns who come up to my ideas of what is right and proper in personal habits. The most of them indulge, more or less, in devil's tattooing, in slapping of fingers, in puffing and blowing, and other noises anomalous and indescribable, often apparently merely to let the other people in the room know that they are there, and not thinking of anything in particular. Few seem to be under any sense of the propriety of subduing as much as possible all sounds connected with the animal functions, though even breathing might and ought to be managed in perfect silence. In Norway the case is particularly bad, as the gentlemen, in addition to everything else, assume the privilege of smoking and spitting in every room of every house, and even in the presence of ladies.[2] To a sensible and wellbred person all such things are as odious as they are unnecessary. It is remarkable throughout the continent how noisily men conduct themselves. They have not our sense of quietness being the perfection of refined life. At Minde a gentleman over my head made an amount of noise with his luggage and his personal movements which astonished me, for it created the idea of a vast exertion being undergone in order to produce it, as if it had been thought that there was some important object to be served by noise, and the more noise the better.