d on her way through the Wassbottom
Lake. At the end of this we entered the Carls Graf, or that portion of
the canal built by Charles IX., to avoid the upper falls of the Gota
River. The canal is here cut through solid masses of rock, and must
have been a work of great difficulty and expense.

Late in the evening we arrived at the Falls of Trolhaetta.

CHAPTER XXVII.

VOYAGE TO CHRISTIANIA.

I shall not stop to describe the Falls of Trolhaetta. Better
word-painters have so often pictured the beauties of this region that
there is nothing left for an unimaginative tourist like myself.

A few hours' travel by the river steamer brought me to Gottenburg,
where, for the first time since my arrival in Europe, I really began
to enjoy life. Not that Gottenburg is a very lively or fascinating
place, for it abounds in abominations and smells of fish, and is
inhabited by a race of men whose chief aim in life appears to be
directed toward pickled herring, mackerel, and codfish. There was much
in it, however, to remind me of that homeland on the Pacific for which
my troubled heart was pining. A grand fair was going on. All the
peasants from the surrounding country were gathered in, and I met very
few of them, at the close of evening, who were not reeling drunk.
Besides, they chewed tobacco--an additional sign of civilization to
which I had long been unaccustomed.

[Illustration: IN NORSELAND.]

At Gottenburg, in the absence of something better to do, I made up my
mind to visit Norway. The steamer from Copenhagen touches on her way
to Christiania. She has an unpleasant habit of waking people up in the
middle of the night; and I was told that if I wanted to make sure of
getting on board, I must sit up and watch for her. This is abominable
in a mercantile community; but what can be expected of a people whose
noblest aspirations are wrapped up in layers of dried codfish? By
contract with the kellner at my hotel the difficulty was finally
arranged. For the sum of two marks, Swedish currency, he agreed to
notify me of the approach of the Copenhagen steamer. I thought he was
doing all this solely on my account, but afterward discovered that he
had made contracts at a quarter the price with about a dozen others.

It was very late in the night, or very early in the morning, when I
was roused up, and duly put on board the steamer. Of the remainder of
that night the least said the better. A cabinful of sea-sick
passengers is