A Summer Holiday in Scandinavia

4th August. -- After breakfast the next day we strolled forth into the town to make a few more inquiries about carioles, and generally to look round Christiania. In regard to conveyance we came to the conclusion, after many amusing conversations with the natives -- in which a few pencil sketches made in my note-book greatly helped to eke out our slender store of Norsk -- that the cariole and stol-kjaerre were the only practical or possible forms of carriage. This conclusion we found afterwards to have been perfectly correct. We should have risked our lives a dozen times between Christiania and Laerdalsoroen had we carried out our first intention of importing a small covered van, such as that used by gypsies, into Norway, and occasionally using it as a tent on shooting expeditions. Riding horses, as I have said, were very scarce and untrustworthy.

We did not, at this time, understand the advantage of hiring Mr. Bennett's carioles and keeping them from station to station all the way. We, however, followed this plan on our return by the south road, and found it answered admirably. Even the poorest people of the interior never once meddled with the numerous packages which we could thus leave attached to the backboards all night, and I strongly advise all tourists in Norway to hire their vehicles from the Cariole Company before leaving Christiania. They will get far cleaner and stronger ones than they can hope to find up country, and they will save themselves an endless amount of tying and untying of portmanteaus, etc., which is anything but a pleasant task when one arrives late in the cold of the evening at the station where your supper is waiting for you, and when the spray of cataracts or the rain has swollen the knots so much that they have the strongest objection to come undone.

Having finished the investigations concerning carioles, we walked through several markets, the only characteristic of which was their extreme poverty. To take an example, six baskets of raspberries and four of strawberries on a stall in the center of a square, seemed to form the fruit market; an ancient leg of mutton and a few pieces of unrecognizable flesh in a circular arcade, betokened the meat market -- and so on.

Continuing our explorations we followed the road which passes the front of the Hotel Scandinavie through the town, and up a gentle slope, till we found ourselves at the front door of the New Palace. Both its position and style of architecture strikingly reminded those of us who had visited Greece of the king's palace at Athens. Take away the rhododendron bushes from the front of this Norwegian palace, and supply their place with an orange garden and palms, and you might in this summer weather almost fancy yourself at the top of Hermes Street.

Lunch over, we sent our baggage on by a porter, and leisurely walked to the station. As to the other sights of Christiania, and an account of the town itself, are they not written in Murray? There is no fault to find with the Hotel Scandinavie, except on account of the noise made by the carts tearing over the stone-pavement. To me, I confess, such racket kept up all day long was very objectionable. Doubtless this might easily be avoided by taking rooms at the back of the house.

The railway station is quite a considerable edifice, standing close to the harbor at the end of the Ustre-gaden.

Having purchased tickets for ourselves and our luggage, we mounted into a very respectable second-class carriage of the 12:30 train for Eidsvold. Certainly, as far as I can see, only "princes and fools" would travel first-class in Norway. The second-class carriages are here quite as comfortable as our English first-class, and among other points for attention they