PREPARATIONS FOR THE JOURNEY. 25 



in fences, and straight short cuts made from one 

 village to another. The travelling is now by sledge; 

 and if he is only well wrapped up, the traveller 

 rolls along as comfortably as in a first-class railway 

 carriage ; not so, however, when he travels on the 

 bare roads in one of these peasant carts — for of all 

 the bone-setting, jolting, infernal machines that a 

 traveller ever rode in, these are the worst. Talk 

 of the old English coach-box before springs were 

 invented, it was nothing to them ; and certainly 

 Sweden can boast of the worst public conveyances 

 of any country in the world. Imagine a little shal- 

 low box, about 6 feet long and 4 feet wide, fixed 

 upon a wooden axle, with two of the most rickety 

 wheels that ever hung together, and in the middle 

 of this box a seat placed upon two slanting ash- 

 poles, about 1 foot above the axle — and the reader 

 can form an idea of a Swedish peasant's cart. 

 There is not a spring about the whole concern ; 

 and as for an apron, such a thing was never dreamt 

 of here. The jolting of such a machine over bad 

 roads, with deep ruts, can be better imagined 

 than described. The peasants, who are hard as 

 nails, don't feel it a bit; but the poor traveller, 

 especially if he be one of the soffc-wooled kind, is 

 kept in a constant state of agony and fear where- 

 ever the roads are bad (and in spring and autumn 

 the ruts are often up to the axle), obliged to hold 



