Passing along we saw several horses dying on the roadside from hunger; and one poor brute, that we observed, in the morning, lying in a ditch, was quite dead when we reached the same spot in the evening. Our driver, who was an intelligent man, and, having been a volunteer in the English service, spoke our language fluently, said, that all the oats and corn which could be spared had been shipped within a few months to England, to allay the threatened famine there; and the animals in the country were starving from the deficiency of all kinds of grain. The pastures, we could ourselves see, were dry, and in many parts burnt to chaff, while the present summer beginning with oppressive heat, and the preceding one having been equally unfavourable to the pasturage, the scarcity of food was severely and fatally felt by all cattle.
"Every thing, Sir," said the man, "would have gone on well, had the king forbidden corn to be sent to England, for Sweden can feed its inhabitants; but when we send away any part of the crop, we feel the loss very much."
"Have you ever suffered so much before?" one of us asked.
"No, Sir," he replied; "the Swedes are poor, and very little satisfies them. We feel not famine ourselves, but the animals do; and if they die now, at the beginning of summer, for want of food, what will they do when the long winter comes? There—there's another," he said, as we drove past another horse stretched near a hedge on the road, and struggling faintly for life.
"Your horses will be exterminated," I said, "if they are neglected in this wholesale fashion."
"Why, Sir," answered the Swede, "horses are not of much use in Sweden, for the agriculture of the country is carried on so differently to what it is in England, that a family, with their own hands, can plough and sow a sufficient quantity of land to supply their wants through the winter; and we don't buy and sell corn here, for we all have our few acres. The farmers, therefore, allow the horses to starve, in order to apply the food they would consume to the preservation of cows and sheep."
The country through which we travelled appeared dreary in the extreme: its level, sandy surface being nowhere varied by the pleasing undulation of hill and dale. This is not the general aspect of Sweden, I know; but, perhaps, I perceive this deficiency the more, being so lately arrived from Denmark, where the landscapes are soft and beautiful, while the natural gloom of its forests is relieved by the calmness of its lakes.
We reached Falkenborg at twelve, and, by dint of much loud knocking, awoke the people at an inn, or cabaret, where we slept. The following morning, as soon as it was light, we went to fish in a river near the town, but encountered the same good fortune of which we had hitherto made no complaint, considering that the mere sport of angling for salmon had brought us to Scandinavia; and up to the present moment we had not seen the scaly snout of a single fish. We murmured not; but could not resist the doubt, that the existence of salmon in Northern Europe was a reality; nor could we conceal from ourselves the absurd light in which we appeared to the simple people who each day, with mute astonishment, beheld us, late and early, in storm and calm, deliberately and untiringly flog with a long line of cat-gut their legendary streams, in the vain hope of capturing a creature not to be caught in them; and which effort on our part was, in their opinion, a striking proof of the aberration of human intelligence.
We had now travelled over a space of more than a thousand miles, and were as far removed from the object of which we came in pursuit, as the first hour when we left Greenwich; and yet our diligence had been exemplary, our inquiries most minute, and our measures, in carrying out the information we received, most prompt.
R—— and P—— went on board perfectly disgusted, and ready to start on the morrow for Kongsbacka, or Gottenborg, or anywhere else. I sympathised with their disappointment, for the desire to catch salmon had amounted to a passion; and I do not think any other feeling, even of love or hatred, sat more paramount in their breasts; and when I called to mind how,