CANALS— EAILWAYS— POSTAL SEEVICE. 155 



verted into an island ly the construction of the Gota Canal, forming an unin- 

 terrupted line of communication 260 miles long between the Baltic and Kattegat. 

 The water-parting is at Lake Wiken, 305 feet above sea-level, whence the canal 

 falls eastwards to Lake Wener, and so on through other lakes to the Soderkoping- 

 fiord, on the Baltic. In this section there are thirty-nine locks, by which vessels 

 are successively raised or lowered. West of Lake Wiken the canal falls through 

 nineteen locks to Lake Wener, whence the Gota forms its natural continuation 

 to the Kattegat. But this river is interrupted by falls and rapids, of which, 

 those at Rannum, near Wenersborg, had already been turned by a canal early in 

 the seventeenth century. Those of Trollhiittan seemed to present an insur- 

 mountable obstacle, till Swedenborg, the strange dreamer and daring engineer, 

 projected its canalisation. This work, interrupted after the death of Charles XII., 

 was not finished till 1800, and since then the engineer Nils Erikson has replaced 

 it by another canal, whose eleven monumental locks, cut in the live rock, remain 

 a model of their kind and a source of universal admiration. Ships drawing 

 about 10 feet of water can pass from sea to sea through this chain of lakes, rivers, 

 cuttings, and regulated falls constituting the Gota Canal. They may also pass 



Fig. 78. — Gota, or Gotland Canal. 



50 IS] lies. 



through secondary junction canals far inland. One of these, the Dalsland Canal, 

 158 miles long, gives access to Norway. Starting from Lake Wener, it runs north- 

 west through several lakes, and is carried over a cataract b}"- a daring viaduct, 

 designed, like most of these works in Sweden, by Nils Erikson. The navigation 

 on all these canals, as well as through the locks about Stockholm, is very brisk. 



Norway preceded S.weden by two years in the construction of railways, the 

 first of which, between Christiania and Eidsvold, was opened in 1854. Still the 

 nature of the country necessarily prevented the system from receiving as great a 

 development as in the neighbouring state. Of the main lines one only is all but 

 finished, that which crosses the peninsula from Trondhjem to Christiana-fiord 

 and the Swedish frontier near Frederikshald. The section connecting Eidsvold 

 with Hamar, on Lake Mjosen, still remains to be completed. The route from 

 Trondhjem to the Gulf of Bothnia, which will be the northernmost on the globe, 

 has not yet crossed the Scandinavian water-parting. The Bergen line also stops 

 at the foot of the mountains which are to be tunnelled, and the line so continued 

 south-east to Drammen. Of the coast line projected between Christiania and 

 Stavanger the two terminal links only have been so far constructed. 



