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Ebook has 1033 lines and 113714 words, and 21 pages

Departure from Greenwich--The History of the Iris Yacht --Sheerness--Harwich--Under Weigh--The North Sea--Sail in Sight--The Mail Overboard--Speaking the Norwegian 1

Foggy Weather--First View of Norway--Christiansand Fiord --Arrival at Christiansand--Description of the Town--The Toptdal River--Excursion Inland--The Enthusiastic Angler--Rustic Lodgings--Hunting the Bear--The Trap--The Death--Norwegian Liberality 13

Departure from Christiansand--The Pilot's Pram--Skaw Point --Delinquencies of Jacko--Expensive Cannonading--Elsineur --Hamlet's Walk--The Minister, Struensee--Story of Queen Caroline-Matilda--Legend of the Serf 46

The Pilot--Tempestuous Weather--Distant View of Copenhagen --Lord Nelson--The Battle of the Baltic--The Harbour-Master --Interest excited by the Yacht's Arrival--The Artist--The Angler--We go Ashore 58

Copenhagen--The Cape--The Dilemma--The Guard--Compliment to England--Description of the Harbour and Fortifications-- Delinquent Sailors--The City on Sunday--Negro Commissionaire --A Walk through the City--Notices of the various Public Buildings 74

The Casino--The Royal Family of Denmark--Succession to Holstein--The English Consul--Visit to the English Ambassador --Colossal Statue of Christian the Fifth--Anecdote of Belzoni --Trinity Church--Extraordinary Feat of Peter the Great --Ducking an Offender--Palace of Christiansborg--The Exchange --The Castle of Rosenberg 91

Dinner at the Embassy--Manners and Customs of the Danes--The Spanish Ambassador and the English Exile--The Citadel--Story of the Two Captives--Joe Washimtum, again--A Danish Dinner --Visit to the Theatre--Political Reflections--Festivities on Board the Yacht--Merry Party at the American Ambassador's --The Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein 106

The Exile's Souvenir--The Disappointed Artist--Departure from Copenhagen--Arrival at Elsineur--Description of the Town--The Castle of Cronenborg--Hamlet's Garden--Esrom Lake--The Legend of Esrom Monastery--The French War-Steamer --Sailing up the Cattegat 140

Arrival at Falkenborg--The Storm--The Yacht in Danger--Safe Anchorage--Visit to Falkenborg--Ludicrous Adventure--A Drive into the Interior--Great Scarcity experienced by the Inhabitants--Description of the Country--The Disappointed Anglers--Kongsbacka--The Yacht runs aground--Gottenborg 154

The Casino at Gottenborg--Awkward Dilemma--The Watchman and the Northern Star--Swedish Artillery--The Grove--An Old Man's History--The Alarm of Fire--The Carriage overturned--The River Gotha--Washing in the Stream--The Narrow Streets--Description of Gottenborg--Its Decayed Commerce--The Herring Fishery 172

A Drive into the Interior--Extensive and Sublime Prospect --Norwegian Post-Houses--Repair of the Roads--Preparations for Departure 215

The Yacht under sail--Jacko overboard--Fredricksvaern--The Union Jack--Scenery on the Larvig River--Transit of Timber --Salmon Fishing--The Defeated Angler--Ludicrous Adventure with an Eagle--Result of the Angling Expedition--The Bevy of Ladies--Norwegian Dinner-Party, Singular and Amusing Customs 240

Another Fishing Excursion--Landing a Salmon--The Carriole-- Boats rowed by Ladies--Departure from Larvig--Christiansand Harbour--Return to Boom--Sincere Welcome--Angling at the Falls--The Forsaken Angler--A Misunderstanding--Reconciliation --St. John's Day--Simplicity of Manners 260

Sailing up the Gron Fiord--Dangerous Swell--Excursion Ashore --Trout-Fishing--Mountain Scenery--Ant-Hills--Hazardous Drive--The Scottish Emigrant--Miserable Lodging--Condition of the Peasantry--A Village Patriarch--Costume of the Country People--Arrival at Faedde 287

Return to the Yacht--Poor Jacko--Ascending the Stream-- Description of the Faedde Fiord--Adventures of an Angler--Sail to the Bukke Fiord--The Fathomless Lake--The Maniac, and her History--The Village of Sand--Extraordinary Peculiarities of the Sand Salmon--Seal Hunting--Shooting Gulls--The Seal caught--Night in the North 303

The Dangerous Straits--British Seamanship--The Glaciers of Folgefonde--Bergen--Habits of the Fishermen--The Sogne Fiord--Leerdal--Arrival at Auron--A Hospitable Host-- Ascending the Mountains--The Two Shepherdesses--Hunting the Rein-Deer--Adventure on the Mountains--Slaughtering Deer--The Fawn 336

The Sick Sailor--The Storm--The Lee-Shore--"Breakers a-head"--The Yacht in Distress--Weathering the Storm--Return to Bergen--The Physician--The Whirlpool--The Water-Spout --Homeward Bound--Scarborough--Yarmouth Roads--Erith-- Greenwich Hospital--Conclusion 397

ERRATA.

A YACHT VOYAGE TO NORWAY, SWEDEN, & DENMARK.

DEPARTURE FROM GREENWICH--THE HISTORY OF THE IRIS YACHT--SHEERNESS--HARWICH--UNDER WEIGH--THE NORTH SEA--SAIL IN SIGHT--THE MAIL OVERBOARD--SPEAKING THE NORWEGIAN.

I believe the old Italian proverb says, that every man, before he dies, should do three things: "Get a son, build a house, and write a book." Now, whether or not I am desirous, by beginning at the end, to end at the beginning of this quaint axiom, I leave the reader to conjecture. My book may afford amusement to him who will smile when I am glad, and sympathise with the impressions I have caught in other moods of mind; but I have little affinity of feeling, and less companionship with him who expects to see pictures of life coloured differently from those I have beheld.

Dropping down with the tide, we arrived the same evening alongside the guard-ship at Sheerness; and, being desirous of making ourselves snug, and of landing two unfortunate friends whom we had originally promised to send ashore at Gravesend, we made fast to a Government buoy, and remained in smooth water till the following morning.

On Sunday morning, the 2nd, at eleven, as the church bells of Sheerness were chiming a merry peal, we commenced preparations for our departure, by sending our two friends off in the jolly-boat, in which they must have got pretty wet; for a sea was running sufficiently high to cause them some little discomfort. After a gloomy day's work, we reached Harwich, and at nine in the evening rested again in five fathoms water.

We rose betimes the following day, and strolled about the town in search of stores. We collected on board every kind of preserved meat and vegetable one could think of; and every kind of wine, from champagne down to cherry cordial, the taste of man could relish. We had milk, too, in pots, and mint for our peasoup; lard in bladders, and butter, both fresh and salt, in jars; flour, and suet, which we kept buried in the flour; a hundred stalks of horseradish for roast beef; and raisins, citron, and currants, for plum-pudding.

We had rifles and guns to shoot bears and wolves; and large rods, large as small maypoles, to catch salmon, and small rods to secure the bait. We had fishing-tackle which, when unwound, went all the way into the after cabin, and then back again ten times round the main cabin.

We had water-proof boots, reaching up to the hips, for wading the rivers; and India-rubber pilot-jackets for keeping the chest and back secure from the spray of foss, or wave. Indeed, we had all that the heart of man could wish, and all that his judgment could devise.

The following day came and went in the same monotonous fashion as its predecessor, since I find its events recorded thus:--"Fine day--nothing new. Went ashore. Bought fish, mutton, and beef. Eat all the fish, and some of the beef. Wind E.S.E."

Thursday dawned beautifully calm, and not a cloud was visible between earth and the blue Heaven. As I paced up and down the deck, yet damp with dew, I thought the serenity of the morning emblematic of our future wanderings--and was I wrong? As the sun gained altitude and power, the water became rippled with a light air, and nine o'clock found us fairly under weigh.

We shipped from this port a man named King, who was to act as interpreter. He had been in Norway, and was well acquainted with the people and language, having been for many previous years of his life employed in the lobster fisheries. He proved a most willing, honest, good-tempered servant, and a most useful linguist.

The wind being light, the Iris found it tough work in stemming the strong tide which sets into Harwich; but we contrived at half-past eleven to pass Orfordness Light. At six, the breeze having eastern'd a little, and increased till it became what sailors term "pleasant," we lost sight of Lowestoff; and lastly, being this day's work, as well as for the information of all nautical men, we sounded at half-past seven on Smith's Knoll, in seven fathoms.

"Ay, ay, sir."

"Steady!--So."

"Steady, sir."

"Some man there, heave the lead!" and down it went, rushing, in five-and-twenty fathoms on the Silver Pits. At nine, the vessel was hove to, and we tried our lines for fish, but did not succeed. We filled on her again, and stood away, as before, to the N.E. At two o'clock, while we were trying our lines for the second time, I felt, suddenly, squeamish; and, in spite of the splendid weather and pure air, wished myself most heartily in the middle of Bond-street, or any, the most ignoble alley in the neighbourhood of Leicester-square. I closed my eyes and fancied myself seated on a bench in the Green Park, watching the sheep browsing round me, and listening to the rumbling of carriages as they passed along Piccadilly. I opened my eyes; the vision fades, and, lo!

"Nil nisi pontus et aer."

Early in the morning, about four o'clock, I was awakened by a good deal of laughing and shuffling of feet on deck, and by an occasional thump, as if a cargo of pumpkins was being taken on board.

I leaped out of my berth, and, putting my head above the companion, saw all the men who composed the watch hard at work with their fishing-lines, and the main-deck covered with several large codfish. Witnessing the pugnacity of one or two fish when they were hauled out of the water, I turned in again: for it was no easy matter to stand, the swell increasing as we got more on the Dogger Bank.

She turned out to be, what our glasses had anticipated at daylight, a Norwegian, laden with dried fish, and bound to the coast of Holland; and, therefore, our letters were brought back.

Scarcely had the incident I have just mentioned come to a conclusion, than another sail, just emerging from the horizon, was discovered on our weather bow. We rubbed our hands, plucked our caps over the forehead, and walked up and down the deck more briskly than ever; for there is no man who has not been to sea can imagine the feelings of sailors when, far from land, a sail is seen.

During the rest of the evening I was a martyr to all the miseries of sea-sickness, and, stretched at full length on the cabin sofa, I closed my eyes, and, allowing my thoughts to wander where they would, hoped to cheat myself out of my present discomfort; but nausea, like no other ill to which we are subservient, is not to be pacified, and I lay the whole night sensible of the keenest pain.

FOGGY WEATHER--FIRST VIEW OF NORWAY--CHRISTIANSAND FIORD--ARRIVAL AT CHRISTIANSAND--DESCRIPTION OF THE TOWN--THE TOPTDAL RIVER--EXCURSION INLAND--THE ENTHUSIASTIC ANGLER--RUSTIC LODGINGS--HUNTING THE BEAR--THE TRAP--THE DEATH--NORWEGIAN LIBERALITY.

Sunday, the 9th, dawned on us, tossed about on a troubled sea indeed; for a strong wind was blowing from E.S.E. However, at eight o'clock, just before breakfast, we sounded in thirty-five fathoms. We had scarcely concluded this cautious operation before the wind began to lull; and after conjecturing, both from our calculations and soundings, that land was not far away, we were confirmed in this opinion by a thick fog rising above the horizon on our lee beam. We went to dinner in great glee, and, in spite of the hazy atmosphere which now surrounded us, compensation was felt and accepted by us at the hour of six, when a perfect calm prevailed; and our peasoup and curry were threatened, for the first time this week, to be demolished in that gentlemanly and collected mode which the usages of society had rendered familiar to our observation in England.

At eleven o'clock at night the haziness cleared away, and in about half an hour afterwards a light was seen. It was imagined to be the light at the mouth of the Christiansand Fiord, the name of which, amidst the bustle and joyousness of the moment, I could but indistinctly learn, and cannot now remember. As midnight approached, our old friend the fog gathered density, and effectually deprived us of the slightest glimpse of the light; and we retired to rest ill at ease, plunged into the vale of anxiety in the same ratio as we had been exalted on the peaks of expectation and joy.

Sunday at sea retains all the monotony of the shore; for the waves seem to show deference to the day, and move their crests with more solemnity and order; while the sailors gather round the vessel's bows, and, in a group, listen with wrapt attention to the sublime and poetic sentences of prophetic Isaiah.

I cannot, in all my wanderings at sea, call to mind a tempestuous Sabbath, nor the sailors who would profane it. Mark them! How solemnly the shadow of thought hangs over their countenances; and how, with cheek cradled on the hand, with pipes unsmoked in their mouths, leaning over the bulwarks, their eyes intently riveted on the clear distant horizon, as, carried away by the inspiration and fervour of the great prophet, a messmate, who reads with energy of gesture, ever and anon raises his voice, which, by its tremulous intonation, tells the deep feeling of his heart, and the quickness with which its pulse vibrates in answer to the burning words he utters aloud!

Monday, the 10th, the most lovely of May mornings, fanned by the softest of south winds. Land in all its grandeur of mountain and of cloud lay before me, the towering peaks of the mountains, capped with everlasting snow, and piercing an atmosphere of the intensest blue.

I sat down on the after-lockers, and looked with swelling heart on the sublime scene. As far as the eye could reach inland, mountain over mountain, extending round half the horizon, the land of old Norway, I had read of in my earliest years, expanded itself. On my left hand the Naze hung, frowning, over the Northern Ocean. How memory, in a moment, rushed back to the quaint schoolroom at Ditton, and its still quainter little bookcases huddled up in one corner, where and whence I first began to pronounce and find the "Lindsnes!"

Just at this instant, poor old "Sailor," who had been poking his nose over the vessel's side, and snuffing and whining, rushed up to me, and, placing his head in my lap, turned his eyes towards my face, and looked as much as to say, "Are we not near our journey's end; and don't I smell the land?" Little Jacko, too, came out of his crib, and chirped, and chattered, and scratched himself, and rolled about on the deck in the sunniest corners; and then, all of a sudden, up he would jump, and, seizing hold of "Sailor's" tail, pull it as if he was hauling taut the weather runner. How everything was replete with life; and how happiness, without the heart's reservation, was written on every face! I cannot conceive anything more exhilarating than a beautiful morning at sea, and land in sight; I could have passed the remaining portion of my life without a pang of sorrow, or a gush of joy, but with equanimity, on this dark blue wave, surpassed only in its dark dye and eternity by the dome on which it looked.

When I returned upon deck after breakfast, the first object that attracted my attention was the helmsman. He smiled as soon as his eye met mine, and raised, in recognition, his Spanish-looking hat. He was a stout, tall, fair-complexioned man, with a mild expression of countenance, blue eyes, a long, straight-pointed nose, high cheekbones, and light flaxen hair flowing down almost to his shoulders. He made some observation to me in a dialect which sounded as being a mixture of German, Celtic, and English; but the sense of it was incomprehensible.

"Norway?" I said in reply, pointing to the land now not three miles from us.

"Ja, ja," he answered; and, turning to King, our interpreter, begged, in the Norwegian language, that some of the sails might be trimmed.

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