4 too, in Haparanda's case, where in win- | moment by broad-shouldered operatives The telephone, also, has been accepted in Sweden with remarkable enthusiasm. The official statistical record tells us that whereas in 1882 there were but three hundred and ten kilometres of this useful wire in the land under State control, in 1889 the length had increased to eight thousand eight hundred and forty-two kilometres, exclusive of about thirty-seven thousand kilometres of private wires. In such towns as Gothenburg and Stockholm you see telephone kiosks in almost every street. To get at the upper and most remarkable falls, therefore, one has to force the barricade of the factories. In summer, there is a thoroughfare for the purpose, with little automatic wickets which open in response to silver coins put into a slot. But on this moonlight night I found the conventional highway fast and padlocked, with deep snow on the track. The whirr of machinery resounded on all sides as if in a competition of noise with the tumultuous river. By judicious groping, however, I obtained ample satisfaction. I descended an iced ladder towards a little gallery inches thick in ice, and there, under a fringe of great icicles beaded with granules of spray frozen to the semblance of coral, I stayed long, level with the middle of the famous Toppö Fall, and so near it that the water now and again in its agitation throbbed icily upon me. As a spectacle it contented. It sent the imagination off at a tangent into a field of marvelling. It awoke fancies and aspirations tinted with sublimity kindred to that excited by the starlit empyrean. Where I stood I was in deep shadow, but the moon was upon the Toppö Fall, and also on the dark pines of the opposite bank of the river. But I am straying very far from Trollhattan, thanks to the electric lights which shimmer on the portals of the factories which seem to absorb the upper falls. Guided by the thunder of the waters, I came at length to the vicinity of the first pair of cataracts. The river, it must be explained, in its procession from Lake Wenern to the sea, has to fall about a hundred and forty feet. Of this fall it gets through no less than one hundred and eight feet in the course of not quite a mile in the pine-wooded glen of Trollhattan. There are three emphatic couples of waterfalls of a notably impressive kind, for the stream is broad and deep before it gets convulsed, and the channels by which it is hurled to a lower level are only I tarried here feeling the pulse of the about a quarter of its width above Troll- waterfall as it were-for my gallery hattan. Just at the site of the falls, seemed to sway with the shocks — for and, indeed, partly the occasion of many minutes. Now and then I looked them, are several rocky islets, some up to see the head of a timber millman clothed with pines, and the others cov- peering over at me, or half-a-dozen such ered with industrial works, in the aid of heads; but the good fellows did not which the water power is very precious. interfere with my rhapsody. They may The total force of the falls is reckoned have spoken, if only in warning — for at the stupendous figure of two hundred the situation was not an orthodox one and twenty-five thousand horse power. - but how was I to hear them with this For the sake of commerce one may ex-frantic bellow in my ears? I looked cuse this hedge of factories about the at the boiling, confused heap of white most picturesque scene in Sweden; but, confessedly, one cannot now admit that the glen is likely to have much attraction for the witches of old who cast the veil of romance over it at least unless they are very modern witches, who do not mind being intruded on at every water at my feet, and at the furious precipice of the stream, and had I looked a little longer than I did I believe I should have yielded to its mesmeric influence and dived from my parapet with a shout, to join the troop of spirits and elves who doubtless hold revel beneath the flood. I thought of the man who appeared to the right, connecting the not so long ago went over this fall in a .boat. He waved his hat on the brink, and that was the end of him. For genuine thrill and promptitude there can be no death to compare with such as this. Ere you have done exulting in the spirit of maniac pride which has possessed you, the thousands of tons of the waters are upon your head, and you have done with this life utterly. two banks of the Gotha. Here again was a royal perch. The bridge is new. The kingly coronet which studs its balustrade, and the gilding of its ornamentation, were conspicuous in the pallid light. The view from it at this romantic hour was very fascinating. Above, the Toppö Falls, with their mate the Tjuf Falls, divided by an islet, were a strong, turbulent, white mark on the river; and higher still were the Gullö Falls. Below, the river widened, with the silvery reach of the Hell Falls, where the pine-clad banks again contracted as if to hug the perturbed stream into renewed quiescence; while some sixty feet under the bridge itself is the furious broad Stampström Fall. This is not really so impressive as the Toppö Fall, though it is difficult to measure impressions as if they were stripes of carpet. One's perch of observation is so admirable that something of the majesty of the more comprehensive view gets cast upon the Stampström Fall, and it benefits thereby in retrospect. It was odd to recur from this fortytwo feet waterfall to the men above, methodically adapting a few rivulets stolen from it for the slicing of pinetrunks into sections. They went to and fro in the mingled light of moon and applied electricity-carrying logs on their shoulders, or pushing along the tram lines trollies laden with wooden cubes or chips. When I reappeared among them they paused to stare as if I had been one of Trollhattan's witches lured into activity by the beauty of the night. But the machinery went round and round without intermission. It, at any rate, was impassive. The river has called into motion a vigor of mechanical On the further side of the river the life worth all the trolls that the Scandi-bridge-thus hung like a cobweb over navian fancy ever generated. From one machine yard I passed to another. It was nine o'clock at night, but Trollhattan works without regard for the coming and going of the sun. Why should it not? There is no end to the power poured into its factories. This power is money as surely as if the golden pieces ran down the gutters instead of ice-cold water. Therefore, the men come and go in relays, and there is no night among these whizzing wheels and hissing saws. Still under the clear evening sky, I climbed towards the irregular, rocky heap in the middle of the glen, with a new red church on its summit and a gilded vane which caught the moonlight. There were baby falls here, there, and everywhere, showing that man and nature have at different times plucked at the stream and diverted threads of it. But after the great Toppö Fall they met with no recognition. Then the spidery frame of a suspension bridge, high over the main river, it is attached to the rocks, where the pines grow straight and dark. Here, under the moon, there was a memorable effect of snow, lunar light, and blackness. A workman, swinging along from the mills and homeward bound, could not much disturb the charm of the scene. Through the rifts of the trees the white rage of the river could be seen up stream and down; and over the way the tall Gothic church on its perch, with its vane looking like a disestablished planet. But there was to be a set-off to all this perfect sweetness and light of Dame Nature's contriving. I came to a convenient break in the trees, where the outlook from the rock wall on the other side of the road was broader and more engaging. And here there was to be seen, staring full at the face of the disgusted moon, the advertisement of a Trollhattan clothier, done large in black letters so that they could be read from the very town itself. His materials, he declared thus for the edifica tion of Madame Moon, were the best manded supper in my hotel. The greyand cheapest to be had in the place. eyed girl dear, unspoilt damsel· showed as much gratified animation as if I had been her long-lost brother come back in tolerable health but with perfectly empty pockets. She did her best for me, and stood by with modest smiles while I ate the meal. And afterwards the automatically respectful little page-boy, or whatever he was, bowed night. At no very, early hour the next day I renewed my acquaintance with the falls. It was nine o'clock ere I turned out into the freezing air, and lo! the sun and the moon were both in the horizon as they had been some sixteen hours ago. This time, however, they had changed quarters. The arena of sky between them was cloudless, and the atmosphere was clear as a mountain brook. That is the worst feature in the Swedes. If they would but be confident in the abilities and gifts they have received straight from their Maker, they would be a delightful people, without much exception. They are born polite, good-hearted, honest, and sufficiently good-looking. But they have had it drummed into them by publicists me into my chamber, put his hand into and others that they are a second-rate, the stove to ascertain that it was still or even a third-rate nation. I dare say warm, and wished me a courtly goodtheir schoolbooks err in the same way, differing totally in this respect from Anglo-Saxon schoolbooks, which teach Anglo-Saxon boys that their race is born to the pre-eminence it tells them it has already obtained. The consequence is that they mistrust themselves and their own instincts. The Germans twirl a good many of them round their short thumbs, and excite emulation in others. There is also the French influence, though this is not reckoned nowadays so strong as it used to be. Chief I strolled down by the river, which of all is the well-nigh irresistible con- was now in a state of tolerable livelitagion of American men and manners. ness. Spacious reaches of it were It is perfectly nauseating to hear the frozen two or three hundred yards returned American-Swede flout his En-above the first of the falls. But this glish in the face of the British traveller. did not hinder the Trollhattan people He " guesses and "calculates" about from using it in divers ways. Their litfive times as much as the genuine Yan- tle ships were fast bound in it- caught kee, and the American 'cuteness looks on their journey between the North out of his eyes in a very ugly manner. | Sea and the great lake a few miles to He is generally to be found as a hotel- the north-east, or perhaps even Stockporter. Occasionally, however, one holm itself. They, however, were to meets him travelling en prince, with his be seen sawing at the ice, and cutting hands in his pockets, and his legs any-long strips of it as if it had been bridewhere but where they ought to be. cake sugar. By twos at a time, other men carried these portly blocks to the shore, where they were straightway warehoused in the red buildings convenient for the purpose. In some of these buildings they were crushing it, and piling it about their beer barrels. But it will probably lie a while in the other depositories until the spring gives it a chance of being shipped to England Elsewhere were prettier scenes. Under the blue sky, momentarily deepening to the Italian intensity it acquired by noon, little groups of washerwomen and girls were seen kneeling about the with jujubes-to be to their origin “a little blind," if one is to thoroughly enjoy them. river ice, hard at work. A little tank space had been cut here and there, the four corners of the area being indicated by four blocks of ice large as tomb- It would be an unpardonable slight to stones, and as many little Christmas Trollhattan if no mention were made of trees, which are in Scandinavia largely the huge Gotha locks as well as its sacrificed in winter for this kind of waterfalls. These suffer more from the service. The ladies bent over the dark well, and thus performed their useful labors. One could with difficulty dispossess the mind of the idea that they were incurring a frightful risk in thus crowding together where the ice was already fractured. But experience had doubtless taught them how far they may trust their native stream at such a time. winter than do the waterfalls. They are then in absolute disuse. In summer one may see big ships lifted gradually up the glen until the hundred-feet ascent of Trollhattan is safely made. All day and all night the work goes on, and one may then genuinely doubt whether nature's show or man's is the more alluring. But in winter the sluices are frozen. Some of the channels are Add to these gratifying industrial in- so nearly void of water that one may cidents the spectacle of little girls and see their smooth, well-laid bottoms of boys skating and sliding on the river, granite cubes, slightly concave. The the very vivid green hue of the Gotha locks are shut, or half shut, it does not in the distance where it ran rapidly and matter which; they are as Jack Frost unfrozen towards the first of its falls, has taken them. And the small boys the rocky, fir-clad banks with their of the district skate up and down beblanket of snow, and the mild face of tween them, some with baskets of the departing moon apparently caught things which their careful mothers have by one of the twigs of the dark-tinted bid them buy in Trollhattan. trees this all in the broadest and most jocund mood of wintry daylight; and you may conceive that Trollhattan was a sight to cheer the heart. Akervass, the village of these sluices, is about two miles from Trollhattan, and nestles at the lower end of the waterfall glen round a wide pool of the Gotha. The river here looks calm and innocent enough, and in its waters you may see the blue sky, the pine-trees and their banks, and the white villas among the pines, all mirrored tranquilly. I revisited all the falls and again admired the majesty of their volume. This, however, as may be supposed, is in winter much less than in summer or the end of spring, when the snows have melted. Besides, a vast deal of the For a health-restoring sojourn Akerwater hung stiff and still in fantastic vass would be better than Trollhattan. curtains. The icicles under the sun- The excitement of the upper glen is light took their proper tints. Some lacking; but it is within half an hour's were pearl-white, and some were a tur- walk among granite rocks mossed with quoise-blue, while yet others were a lichens, heather, and wild flowers, and delicate salmon and primrose hue, or with nothing but the graceful, dark arms even the color of mahogany. There is of the pines intervening between you no need to dispel the illusion of all this and the blue heavens. This is its sumbeauty by analyzing the source of its mer presentment. I suppose every invariegation. The battalions of icicles habitant of the glen would declare that were not a whit less fair to see when the Gotha valley is only beautiful in the one perceived that they owed much of warm months. But I doubt if it could their motley gear to the various oozes fascinate more than upon a cloudless from the works which they adorned. | winter's day, with twenty degrees of It is well with variegated icicles -as frost in the air. For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. 194 256 |