LATER YEARS 179 



A letter from Stockholm, dated 9th December, to 

 Mr. Fyfe gives an interesting account of the journey 

 thither. 



" We left London the day before yesterday only, and it is as 

 if we had been away for months. The North Sea was mizzly, 

 grey, but calm. We saw the Dutch sabots and bunchy petti- 

 coats by lamplight as we reached Flushing : then we dined on 

 the train, took our sleeper and slept through Germany, getting 

 to Altona near Hamburg at 7.30 a.m. Then we ate and admired 

 a huge statue of two horse-men fighting for the possession of a 

 fish. Then to Kiel, which we reached in an hour and a half and 

 found in brilliant sunshine. There are huge ship-building yards 

 covered in with glass, and they are busy, evidently. We sailed 

 to Korsor in Denmark, a sail of about five hours. We counted 

 at once 28 German men-of-war, cruisers and torpedo boats, and 

 we saw at least another 20 in the harbour. There wasn't another 

 boat, not even a fishing boat, in sight. What is all this for ? 

 To guard commerce ? There wasn't a sign of it. But the 

 Baltic canal is now ready, and this is a nice little pond to man- 

 oeuvre in when there is nobody to look on. The ships were 

 evidently doing something, signalling with flags, putting about 

 and about and up to some game. But, of course, we couldn't 

 understand the game. Was it practising for a future meeting 

 with England ? We had brilliant weather, cold, but a warm 

 sun. About 3.30 we got into narrower waters and saw Denmark 

 on both sides. Then into the train at Korsor, and in two hours 

 we were in Copenhagen. In these parts it gets dark at about 

 4.30, so we saw little of Copenhagen during our drive a long 

 one to the next boat ; for we crossed to Malmo in Sweden in 

 the funniest boat I ever saw. It carried two lines of rails laden 

 with trucks. And we had a meal of sorts, the table loaded with 

 food but no waiters, and people crowded round, so that we had 

 to ask for all we wanted, cold meat, cold fish and what they call 



