On Tuesday morning, the 1st of June, at eleven o'clock, just one month after our departure from Greenwich, we left Sweden for Norway. The time had glided pleasantly and speedily away; and, wherever we had gone, kindness and hospitality always awaited us. We had brought from England few letters of introduction, and, at some places where we went, on our first arrival, knew no one; but here, as here at Gottenborg, not many hours would elapse before the doors of these simple and generous hearted people were opened to us; and, the greatest delight was evinced, when we entered their houses.
Gottenborg was founded by the great Gustavus Adolphus. The town is situated, like all the towns of Scandinavia, on a fiord of its own name, sleeping with all the placid beauty of a lake; but there is so much monotony in the romantic position of the Swedish and Norwegian towns, that, to describe one is to describe all. There are one or two fine buildings in Gottenborg; and the many villas in its neighbourhood, invariably bosomed in thickly wooded valleys, urged me to remember an old tradition among the Swedish Laplanders, which has not been lost on the Swedes. They maintain the Swedes and the Lapps were originally brothers. A storm burst; the Swede was frightened, and took shelter under a board, which God made into a house; but the Lapp, unappalled, remained without. Since that time, the Swedes dwell in houses, but the Lapps under the bare sky.
What Venice was to ancient Italy, Gottenborg was to Sweden, the national mart; but Time, with ravages and alterations, has swept away its traffic. A Swedish fisherman told me, that the herrings, which used to be so plentiful in the adjacent waters, are now scarcely to be caught; and Gottenborg feels the defection of their extensive sale. The same man asserted, that our ships of war, going up the Baltic, were wont to fire salutes, and the noise had driven the fish away. The fisherman made this statement so roundly, that I could not have the heart to tell him how incredulous I was; but, when I got on board the yacht, I repeated the circumstance, as a jest, to the sailor who stood at the gangway to receive me.
"Well, your Honour," replied the man, after listening with attention to my narrative, "he arn't put his helm too hard a-port."
"What!" I said, "do you intend to tell me you believe that a salute will frighten herrings, from this fiord, or any other fiord, so that they never return?"
"Why, your Honour," answered the sailor, touching his hat, "I must run alongside this ere foreigner, and sequeeze [acquiesce] with him like; for when I was aboard the Racehorse, sloop o' war, we fired a salute off the Western coast of England, and I'm blowed, your Honour, if they didn't ax Sir Everard to cease the hullabaloo."
"Why?" I asked.
"Ay; your Honour," said the credulous tar, "that's just what I'm bearing up to—why, your Honour, bekase we frightened away the pilchards! May I never lift another handspike if that ain't gospel, that's all your Honour!"
"You be hanged!" I muttered.
"What! your Honour," exclaimed the man, warming with his faith, "have you never heerd, that the report of a cannon will make a lobster shake off his big, starboard claw?"