.

The Goetha Canal, as before intimated, utilizes and connects several
of the great lakes of southern Sweden, the principal ones in
Scandinavia being located in this region. Lake Wener, which receives
the waters of eighty rivers large and small, has an area of
twenty-four hundred square miles, being nearly ten times as large as
the famous Lake of Geneva. Lakes Wetter and Maelaren are the next in
importance, either of which is fully twice the size of the Swiss lake
just named. The canal proper--that is, the portion which has been
artificially constructed--is ten feet deep, fifty wide at the bottom,
and ninety at the surface. Two hundred and seventy miles of the route
traversed by the vessels navigating the canal between Gottenburg and
Stockholm are through lakes and rivers, all of which are remarkable
for their clear spring-like character and the picturesqueness of
their surroundings. Stockholm is situated on the Maelaren lake, where
it finds an outlet into the Baltic. This large body of water is
studded all over with islands of every form and size, on some of
which are quaint old castles, mysterious ruins, and thick woods,
haunted only by those rovers of the sky, the eagle and the hawk.
Others are ornamented by charming villas, surrounded by fine
landscape gardening, with graceful groves of drooping willows and
birch-trees. Some contain only fishermen's huts, while here and there
clusters of their small cottages form an humble village. The marine
shells which are found in the bottom of some of the inland lakes of
both Norway and Sweden show that the land which forms their bed was
once covered by the sea. This is clearly apparent in Lake Wener and
Lake Wetter, which are situated nearly three hundred feet above the
present ocean level. The first-named body of water is some eighty
miles long by a width of thirty. The latter is as long, but averages
only ten miles in width. Complete skeletons of whales have been found
far inland, at considerable elevations, during the present century.
The oldest shell-banks discovered by scientists in Scandinavia are
situated five hundred feet above the present level of the ocean. How
significant are these deposits of a prehistoric period!

Sweden has comparatively few mountains, but many ranges of hills.
Norway monopolizes almost entirely the mountain system of the great
northern peninsula; but the valuable large forests of pine, fir, and
birch which cover so much of the country are com