40 Mr Johnston on the Elevation of 



preserve the beauty of the promenade, one of the finest in the 

 neighbourhood of the city. At present it is dammed up to the 

 height of four or five feet, and the character of all the land 

 around shews, that in ancient times it has been very much 

 higher, and more extensive. 



The upper parts of the Maeler, and its many arms and inlets, 

 exhibit similar evidence of a rise of the land. Wherever the 

 nature of its shores admits of it, it is girt by a rich belt of land 

 gained from the waters, and beyond the present limits of its nu- 

 merous branches extend large tracts of land already recover- 

 ed and cultivated, small reedy lakes cut off by banks or marshes 

 from the main body of the lake, or patches of flat land which 

 seem to be still undergoing a gradual drainage. Whoever has 

 sailed along the Maeler, made accessible like our own lakes by 

 the introduction of the steam-boat, must have observed many 

 instances of the recession of its waters, but they are still better 

 seen on exploring by land the upper limits, where no boat can 

 any longer penetrate. Near the palace of Ekolsund, the pro- 

 perty of Dr Seton, at a distance of about thirty miles from 

 Stockholm, an arm of the lake, from which it derives its name, 

 has been shortened several miles by this natural drainage ; and 

 the long narrow canal which still admits vessels within a short 

 distance of Upsala, is evidently the relic of a branch of the 

 lake, at one period of great extent. The countless islands also 

 sprinkled over the bosom of the Maeler, and which present so 

 many varying beauties to the eye of the voyager, direct the 

 mind back to that remote period, when they constituted only so 

 many hidden rocks or sandbanks beneath the surface of a body 

 of water much more vast than the lake now presents. 



In many other parts of the North and Middle of Sweden, a 

 similar drainage is observable, and that not only in the flatter 

 districts, as around Cronstad, at the head of the lake Wener, 

 but also in the mountainous and hilly country extending over 

 Wermeland, Smoland, Dalecarlia, and part of several other 

 provinces. The neighbourhood of Norkoping also, and part of 

 the line traversed by the great canal, afford of themselves, evi- 

 dence of a lifting up of the land, sufficient to satifsy any un- 

 biassed mind. 



