yields the white wood. The last in this country is reckoned of inferior
value to the red wood.
I was very much struck with the goodness of the roads in Sweden:
they are narrower than our British roads, and sometimes you meet
with pretty steep pulls in them; but they are all so smooth that they
convey the idea of travelling in a gentleman’s park. This goodness of
the roads is to be ascribed to the same cause that makes the roads so
excellent in the Highlands of Scotland. The bottom is always sufficiently
hard ; and at no great distance excellent materials are every where
attainable; and when once the roads are made they are not liable to be
cut up by heavy carriages. The carts in Sweden are all four-wheeled,
and so small and light that a man could easily carry one of them , upon
his back, and when loaded they might be dragged on by a stout man
without any difficulty. From , all that I could see, I should suppose
that six or seven hundred weight is an ordinary load for two horses in
Sweden. The roads are under the charge of peasants, each of .whom
has a certain number of feet of road which he is obliged to keep in repair
at his own expense. These distances are all carefully marked off
by small pieces o f board, upon which are painted the initials of the
peasant who has the charge of that portion of road.
All the land under culture in Sweden is: inclosed, not with quickset
hedges or stone-walls as in Britain, but with a wooden paling.. The
only part of Sweden where hawthorn hedges are to be seen is the
neighbourhood of Gottenburg, and the custom has doubtless originated
with the British merchants settled there. In Scania I observed a hedge
made of sloe-bushes; but the practice was not generally followed. The
Swedish palings are very different from ours, and occasion a prodigious
waste of wood. Two,stakes are driven into the ground at a little distance
from. each other, and between four and six feet high: these are
tied together in three or four places at equal distances by a kind of rope
made of birch bark. A row of such double stakes at the distance of
about four feet from each other goes quite round the field to be inclosed.
The whole space from the ground to the top of these stakes is filled
up with pieces of fir-wood lying above each other, and kept in their
places by the double stakes, and the birch ropes which support
them.
These palings very frequently cross the road, and at such places
there is a gate, which is always kept shut. The business o f the peasant
boy, who goes along with the horses in these cases, is to get down and
open the gate, in order to let the carriage pass. These gates, in some
parts o f the country, are so numerous as materially to affect the rate of
travelling. For you have always to stop a little at each of them to
allow the boy to get on again. Near towns and villages the children
always run before and have the gate open by the time you reach it.
For this attention they are commonly rewarded with a small piece of
copper money, usually about two stivers.
The corn on the sides o f the road was nearly ripe: it consisted of
rye and big, and a few ridges of oats. The crops in general looked
well, except that they were exceedingly foul. The mode of farming
was very singular. The fields were all divided into pretty broad ridges,
which were occupied alternately with different kinds o f grain. The
first ridge in the field we shall suppose was rye, the second grass, the
third big, the fourth potatoes, the fifth oats; and in this way they
alternated over the whole field. I do not see any other way o f accounting
for this singularity than by supposing that the different ridges belonged
to different individuals. Had one person cultivated the whole
field, we can hardly suppose him foolish enough to adopt so preposterous
a mode.
All the fields in Sweden, except those under tillage, are thick scattered
with junipetberry bushes ’(juuiperus communisJ of various sizes,
which at a: distance have very much the appearance o f the fuize bushes
so frequent in the commons in England. Neither furze nor broom are
to be'found wild in Sweden, not being capable o f withstanding the
rigor of the Swedish winter. The Swedish commons can hardly be
said to be covered with-grass,1 but are thick spread with the various
berries whieh are to be found in great quantifies in the Highland muirs
in Scotland. These are rasps ( ritbus id turns), crowberries ( empetrum
nigrum), bilberries, or b\a.ebeines (vaccinium myrtillusj, red whortlee
2