From Bjoberg the descent was rapid, and was like the change from Christmas to midsummer; the sun's rays became warmer and warmer, and the breeze more mild, until they exchanged the snow-clad hills, the bleak uplands, and the barren patches of reindeer's moss, for the wild-flowers, the sparkling rivers, and the luxuriant greenness of the northern summer.
At Huftun they found excellent entertainment at the house of Madame Brun, a Frenchwoman, whose superior cookery worthily sustained the high gastronomical pretensions of her nation. Near her pretty house they shot two varieties of the woodpecker, and saw tranquilly sailing in mid-air, a few hundred yards from them, a splendid specimen of the Norwegian eagle.
The most abundant bird in Norway is the magpie, which the peasantry, from superstitious motives, seldom or never kill. There are also great quantities of the hooded or gray crow, abundance of swallows and snipes, and great flocks of wild-ducks of five different kinds. Generally, they are excellent eating; but at the Lillie Strand a black duck was shot, a bird of such a singularly unpalatable and fishy goût, that our author jestingly supposed it must be a stray member of the species which the Pope benevolently allows good Catholics to partake of on Fridays.
Grouse, ryper, and woodcock are also found. Grouse one would fancy must be abundant, judging from the experience of an Englishman who is reported to have killed twenty-two brace in one day.
Lake Kröderen they found a pretty placid sheet of water; but after the surpassingly grand and beautiful scenery through which they had passed, it seemed to them tame; and as it was impossible to obtain any refreshment on board the steamboat which plied on its waters, they made no unnecessary delay, but pressed on as quickly as they could to Christiania, whence they repaired, viâ Jonköping and Helsingborg, to Copenhagen.
The Swedish railways they found very slow, and the country flat and uninteresting, except around Lake Wenern, which was beautiful, and had besides all the interest associated with the birthplace of Linnæus. They passed the little village in which the boyhood of the great botanist was spent, and called to mind that as a child he could not recollect names; and was voted, even at the university of Lund, a most superlative dunce, who could not be made to display much interest in anything except the pursuits of his father and uncle, who were ardent botanists. So poor was the household of this illustrious Swede, that his father could only allow him eight pounds a year for his whole collegiate course; and the poor student while at Upsal had often to mend his shoes with gray paper, and sally forth rod in hand to eke out his slender meals with a few fish from the lake. The country between Elsinore and Copenhagen impressed them favourably; it is, our author says, 'dense with beech and fir woods, and full of glades, lakes, and park-like lawns.'
Copenhagen is a handsome town, with a population singularly English-looking in manners and appearance. Its great point of attraction for our tourists was the Museum, filled with the works of Thorwaldsen, the Phidias of the North. Here, in the middle of a large hall, a cenotaph is erected to the memory of the great sculptor; and around stand the imperishable monuments of his genius, instinct with the classic grace, with the refined delicacy, with the glorious beauty of old Greek art, carried to as great perfection beneath these cold skies of the gray North as ever it was in sunny Athens.
From Copenhagen our tourists returned by Jutland and the Hamburg railway to Calais; having enjoyed their holiday so much, that Mr Arnold recommends 'all the lovers of nature to see Norway as well as Seville before they die.'