WASTGOTA RESA ROUND LAKE VENERN 191 



with the golden yellow lichen that is the visible sign 

 of purest air. Directly we lose the protecting belt of 

 islands we feel the strong movement of the North Sea 



While the south-west wind roars in the gloaming, 

 Like an ocean of seething champagne. 



Sweden, with its ice-polished rocks, is an iron land, 

 in which only an iron people could have settled. As 

 Kingsley says of New England, ' the people must have 

 been heroes to make what they have of it. 5 One feels 

 this all the more in seeing the flint weapons of West- 

 gothland, Tjorn, and Bohuslan. 



Everything, except the population, is multitudinous 

 in Sweden. Where other places have a grove of fir 

 trees, here are miles, whole provinces, of forests ; where 

 other lands boast of one lake, here are hundreds ; and 

 for islands, we here have archipelagoes in the gross ; the 

 gnats move in battalions, instead of the one solitary 

 trumpet that dismays your midnight hours in other coun- 

 ries. Linnaeus says there is wonderfully much of natural 

 history here sea and seaweed, fish and zoophytes, and 

 an amazing multitude of curious treasures in this am- 

 phibious ground. He describes these things at length 

 in a list. Of Marstrand, the most famed and popular 

 Swedish watering-place, though their name is legion 

 too, he says it is a smallish town, with no more sick- 

 ness here than elsewhere which speaks well for the 

 rest of Sweden. 



Marstrand is a gay place now, and a fashionable 



