OLAND AND GOTHLAND 101 



farm ; she was less smart, also less vulgarised, though 

 more ignorant. ' I guess ' and i awfully ' came in every 

 sentence they uttered. They said it was much harder to 

 make a living in Sweden than in Chicago. 



The lilac is not out yet (May 29), but pansies and 

 cowslips make a sweet foreground to a distant purple 

 lake and clumps of oaks and beeches and blackthorn 

 still in lacelike blossom. The pine forests are less dense 

 here than in most parts of Smiland, and it is easier 

 country to till. The monotony of beauty continues 

 until the landscape subsides into a level, cheered by 

 churches with two-storeyed steeples, and the pretty red- 

 tile-roofed cottages at Nybro. More cultivated the land, 

 and more various though more bare the trees, as we 

 approach the Baltic shore, and more commonplace the 

 scenery ; the light soil is covered with good clover. 

 Round Kalmar there are poplars, and there are blossoms 

 on the leafless fruit-trees ; but there is no specific charac- 

 ter to the vegetation, which is backward here, being ex- 

 posed to the east wind : for, although the large island 

 shelters the sea considerably, it is too low to be much of 

 a protection to the mainland. 



It is a lovely sail over the blue sea from Kalmar to 

 Oland in fair weather. The long low island, with a 

 white church or two upon it, can be well seen from 

 Kalmar ; and on the other hand the Kalmarnahus, a 

 large building of long and varied architectural history 

 dating from 1200, of picturesque and irregular outline, 

 long remains an object of interest in the scene as one 



