fore the mistake was discovered. By sunrise we had reached Lilla Edet,
on the Gotha River, where the buds were swelling on the early trees, and
the grass, in sunny places, showed a little sprouting greenness. We shot
rapidly down the swift brown stream, between brown, bald, stony hills,
whose forests have all been stripped off to feed the hostile camp-fires
of past centuries. Bits of bottom land, held in the curves of the river,
looked rich and promising, and where the hills fell back a little, there
were groves and country-houses--but the scenery, in general, was bleak
and unfriendly, until we drew near Gottenburg. Two round, detached
forts, built according to Vauban's ideas (which the Swedes say he stole
from Sweden, where they were already in practice) announced our
approach, and before noon we were alongside the pier. Here, to my great
surprise, a Custom-house officer appeared and asked us to open our
trunks. "But we came by the canal from Stockholm!" "That makes no
difference," he replied; "your luggage must be examined." I then
appealed to the captain, who stated that, in consequence of the
steamer's being obliged to enter the Baltic waters for two or three
hours between Sodertelje and Soderkoping, the law took it for granted
that we might have boarded some foreign vessel during that time and
procured contraband goods. In other words, though sailing in a narrow
sound, between the Swedish islands and the Swedish coast, we had
virtually been in a foreign country! It would scarcely be believed that
this sagacious law is of quite recent enactment.

We remained until the next morning in Gottenburg. This is, in every
respect, a more energetic and wide-awake place than Stockholm. It has
not the same unrivalled beauty of position, but is more liberally laid
out and kept in better order. Although the population is only about
40,000, its commerce is much greater than that of the capital, and so
are, proportionately, its wealth and public spirit. The Magister
Hedlund, a very intelligent and accomplished gentleman, to whom I had a
letter from Mugge, the novelist, took me up the valley a distance of
five or six miles, to a very picturesque village among the hills, which
is fast growing into a manufacturing town. Large cotton, woollen and
paper mills bestride a strong stream, which has such a fall that it
leaps from one mill-wheel to another for the distance of nearly half a
mile. On our return, we visited a number of wells holl