Vlll PEEFACE. 



large bodies of English to warmer climes as the winter 

 draws near ; and again, these bodies are reinforced by the 

 addition of considerable flights of their congeners, who, 

 though braving the frosts and snows of winter, yet, as the 

 cold winds of spring begin to blow over our island, depart 

 for the sunny south, there to bask in warmth and comfort 

 till the easterly gales have subsided; and they may venture 

 to return home. 



With regard to the first-mentioned English tourists, 

 those who go abroad for pleasure alone, I shall not need 

 to say many words in proof of my assertion, that their 

 numbers have been increasing to an astonishing extent 

 during the last few years. Anybody who has chanced to 

 be staying at Dover or Folkestone, or any of our southern 

 ports, and has watched (as seaside loiterers are apt to do) 

 the arrival and departure of the daily steamers, will not 

 need to be reminded of the continual stream of travellers 

 passing to and from the Continent without intermission, 

 while the addition of so many steamers on the principal 

 lines of route within the last few years is sufficient con- 

 firmation of the increase of travellers. But it is not only 

 in the more beaten tracks that such evidence is apparent ; 

 in less-frequented districts, and to more remote countries, 

 the same remark holds good. With Norway there is now 

 constant direct steam communication, and the fjelds and 

 fjords of that wild but interesting country are annually 

 overrun by hundreds of sportsmen, anglers, and tourists ; 

 whereas, when I visited it in 1 850, there were no steamers 

 from England at all, and we had to make our tedious way 

 through Belgium and northern Germany, and then by the 

 Baltic and Copenhagen ; and the total number of English- 



