THE LAND IN CERTAIN PARTS OF SWEDEN. 9 



depth of sixty-four feet ; and before it was raised again to its present position, which 



is about even with the level of the sea, it had become covered with strata more than 



sixty feet thick. 



Fig. 5. 



a. Site of the buried hut. h. Water in the canal, c. Bed of violet-coloured marl with Cardium edule. 



If the buried vessels alone had been found, we should merely have been called 

 upon to suppose that they had sunk to the bottom of a fiord, which was afterwards 

 silted up and then upraised ; but the situation of this house seems to require far 

 greater changes of level. Had nothing been observed but the wooden walls, we 

 might have imagined that the hut was carried away during an inundation, for I was 

 told of a house that was floated off entire during a flood, in the north-east of Sweden, 

 in consequence of the artificial drainage of a lake. But the fireplace and charred 

 wood on the floor seem entirely opposed to such an hypothesis. To imagine a sub- 

 sidence of the land to the amount of more than sixty feet, and a subsequent eleva- 

 tion, or in other words a series of movements analogous to those by which the phe- 

 nomena of the Temple of Serapis have been explained, appears necessary ; yet this is 

 undoubtedly to assume far greater revolutions in the level of the land, since fishing- 

 huts were first erected in Sweden, than history or tradition would have led us to an- 

 ticipate. As to the fine sand in which the house was enveloped, it may be compared 

 to the sand which is known to collect rapidly and form a mound over wrecked 

 vessels which have sunk and presented an obstacle to a marine current charged with 

 sediment. 



I ought to state that I was unable to examine the remains of the house, since it was 

 entirely cut away, having stood, as will be seen by the section (fig. 5.), in the exact 

 line of the canal, the surface of the waters of which, like the foundation of the house, 

 were situated at about the mean level of the sea ; for Lake Maeler and the Baltic are 

 so nearly on a level, that when the Baltic rises two or three feet above its mean 

 height, the same lock at Sodertelje which usually serves to convey vessels from the 

 Baltic up into Lake Maeler, is used to convey them up in a contrary direction from 

 the lake into the sea. But although I could not see the relic of the fishing-hut itself, 

 I may observe that I had the advantage of conversing with the two eminent engi- 

 neers who were witnesses to the fact, and who, being greatly astonished at the dis- 

 covery, took careful notes of the phenomena at the time. They at first conceived 

 that the building might have been part of some well, although this seemed highly 

 improbable, not only from the size of the wooden structure, but from the occurrence 

 of springs at the surface in the immediate neighbourhood. It was only when the fire- 



MDCCCXXXV. c 



