BOOK S.

M. DU CHAILLU'S SCANDINAVIAN BOOK.*

IT is a great pleasure to the reading world to renew their acquaintance with so old and cherished a friend as M. Paul du Chaillu. Their first introduction to him was a memorable event, and although it was attended by discussions in which he had something to forgive, and they had something to forget, it has been a source of satisfaction to both parties. Twenty years ago, the pugilistic gorilla and the commercially-cannibal Fans were startling objects to the mind of the general reader, and they were received with enthusiasm, tempered by doubt. We have seen Lien dos wares since then, and travellers' tales excite little doubt at present, but also little enthusiasm. It is a far cry to Equatorial Africa, or even to Ashango Land—the scene of a more recent journey by that traveller whom an Irish servant once announced to an ex- pectant company as " Misther Shaloo !"—and of the making of books of travel, since those which transported us thither, there has been no end ; but it is with the old pleasure that we prepare to read The Land of the 111idaight Sun.

There is very little fault-finding to be done in reference to M. du Chaillu's new book, and it is best to get that little over at once. In a word, there is too much of the book ; the author does not dis- tinguish between writing about countries of which little or nothing is known, and it is, therefore, for him to tell everything, and writing about countries which have afforded materials to several authors besides himself, who have, on the whole, used them with ability. The consequence is that the reader gets a good way into the first volume before he comes to anything new, and is all the time thinking, " Where have I read all this before, about Goteberg, Swedish dinners, dress-coats, the smorgas (as inevit- ably mentioned in a book of Scandinavian as the chota kazree is in a book of Indian travel), the affability of the late King Carl XV., the accessibility of the royal palace to all respect- able persons, and the very creditable standard of public educa- tion in Stockholm ?" He has read it all in dozens of books, and M. du Chaillu merely relates it more diffusely and with a stronger touch of personality in the narrative. Several chapters might have been left out altogether, and judicious compression would have improved the whole.

It is jest ten years and three months since M. du Chaillu took passage on board a steamer bound from Stockholm to Haparanda (on the Gulf of Bothnia), the most northerly town in Sweden, and that to which tourists from the south resort, to see the midnight sun and to observe the coast scenery. He gives a charming account of the three days' voyage, the manners and customs of the travellers, the scenes they passed, and the regulations of the steamers. He does not say whether the fol- lowing description still applies :—" All the servants on board of Swedish steamers on the Baltic, including the cooks, are females, and are under the supervision of a stewardess, who is general overseer, and has charge of the culinary department. This custom of employing female servants is said to date from the time of Charles XII., when his wars took away the male population." He adds, with the gallantry of that incon- sistent race which supplies the world with men-cooks, that the

• The Land of the Midnight Sun : Summer and Winter Journeys through Sweden, Norway, Lapland, and Northern Finland. By Paul B. du Chaillu. London : John Murray.

prevalent excellence was not to be wondered at ! He also men- tions that in the Stockholm's Enskilda Bank (now the Riks- banken), " several ladies hold very responsible positions," and adds that a director of that bank, whose own history is most interesting, urged the fitness of women-for such employment, and said " that in many cases, by their education, they were- not so subject to temptation as men." This is one of many hints that we might take from the Swedes with advantage. At Haparanda—a clean, thriving, civilised place, with a well- educated and scrupulously-polite population, mostly Finlanders, in the same latitude as the most northern part of Iceland, and

where the sun rises on June 21st at 12.01 a.m., and sets at 11.37 p.m.—M. do Chailln astonished the natives. He told them he intended to go as far north as he could by land, and

wanted to cross to the Polar Sea. Then they said, " The people do not speak Swedish, after awhile there is no road, and the country is wild, thinly populated; the people will not be able to understand where you wish to go. Will you be able to eat theft. food ?" " The food," said M. du Chaffin, " does not trouble me in the least; I can eat anything." "Just go as far as the- high-road, and come back," said the friendly Haparanders. "No," said the traveller, " I must go as far as North Cape," and as they could not persuade, they heartily helped him. With the start of himself and his guide, Andreas Josefsson, " a good. man," the interest of the narrative, that describes nearly five years of travel, M. Du Chaffin, in an irregular course,.

by routes often crossing each other, and at different seasons, either from the Baltic to the Polar Sea, or from the east to• the west, begins. He observed the whole coast from Haparanda to the extreme north-eastern point of Norway, a distance of 3,200 miles, the greater part of it both in winter and in summer ; and he sailed on almost every fjord, their shores having in the aggregate an extent of over 3,000 miles. The thoroughness of the spirit in which M. du Chaillu made his investigation of the Northland and its peoples, the unsparing exertion that he imposed upon himself, and his genuine sympathy with the aspects of nature and the conditions of mankind in those regions, render the reader indulgent to faults of redundancy and occasional repetition in his- narrative. Those who can recall his description of the scenery of Equatorial Africa, and their own surprise on reading of the vast park-like country, with its giant trees, its grand waterfalls, and its noble animal life, in regions where they had previously pictured only arid- and noxious-

deserts, will derive great pleasure from his description of the Scandinavian countries ; for instance, from such a sketch as this "It is a glorious land ; with snowy, bold, and magnificent moun- tains ; deep, narrow, and well-wooded valleys ; bleak plateaux and slopes ; wild ravines ; clear and picturesque lakes ; immense forests of birch, pine, and fir-trees, whose solitude soothes the restless spirit of man ; superb glaciers, unrivalled in Europe for size; arms of the sea, called fjords, of extreme beauty, reaching far inland in the- midst of grand scenery ; numberless rivulets, whose crystal waters. vary in colour as the rays of the sun strike upon them on their- journey towards the ocean, tumbling in countless cascades and rapids, filling the air with the music of their fall, so beautiful, that the beholder never tires of looking at them. Contrasted with these are immense areas of desolate and barren land and rocks, and swamps and moorlands, so dreary that they impress the stranger with a feel- ing of loneliness, from which he tries in vain to escape. There are also many exquisite sylvan landscapes, so quiet, so picturesque, by the sea and lakes, by the hills and the mountain-sides, by the rivers and in the glades, that one delights to linger among them. Large and small tracts of cultivated land or fruitful glens, and valleys bounded by woods or rocks, with farmhouses and cottages, around which fair-haired children play, present a striking picture of content- ment. Nature in Norway is far bolder and more majestic than in Sweden, but certain parts of the coast along the Baltic present charming views of rural landscape."

Every traveller in Sweden and Norway tells us of the good roads, the quaint, light, pleasant carriages, and the female drivers, and, of course, M. du Chaffin is eloquent upon those points ; but as he is a closer observer, he tells us more about them, and is very frank and entertaining in his stories of his personal relations with the people whom he met on his high-way and by-way journeys. Except Count Goblet d'Alviella, whose description of the sufferings of men and reindeer from mos- quitoes in Lapland is almost too horrid to read, no one has given a more graphic account of those pests of the northern latitudes than this, which refers to Pajala :-

" In these latitudes, the snow has hardly melted when the mos- quitoes appear in countless multitudes, and the people have no rest night or day. In wooded districts, they are a perfect plague in July, after which a gnat appears. This bites very hard daring the day,

but at night leaves one in peace, for it never enters the houses. Last comes a species of sand-fly, which also is very disagreeable. I was surprised, at a turn of the road, to see a black cloud. It was a swarm of mosquitoes, so thick that it was impossible to see anything beyond. I was hurrying the horse through it, when he suddenly stopped, and then I saw three men working on the road who had previously been invisible. This seems incredible, but such are the facts. Josefsson laughed, and observed, We have a saying here that when a traveller comes, he writes his name in a bed of mosquitoes, and when he comes back the following year he sees it again."

Throughout the whole country, merciful and gentle treatment of animals is the rule; there are, consequently, few vicious ones to be met with.

From Pajala, the traveller took the route of the Mnonio River, which runs through a great extent of country, for some distance thickly peopled, and whose northern shores form a part of the frontier between Russian and Swedish Finland. He tells us much of the excitement of this voyage, with the con- stant succession of rapids, and the unfailing dexterity and daring of the boatmen. People who have not seen them, cannot imagine the beauty of the crystal clearness of Scandinavian rivers. And then, the Midnight Sun is to be gazed at, in the midst of solitude and peace, where Nature is primevally grand, and yet man is civilised. " How beautiful was the hour of midnight ! How red and gorgeous was the sun ! How drowsy was the landscape ! Nature seemed asleep, in the midst of sunshine ; crystal dewdrops glittered like precious stones, as they hung from the blades of grass, the petals of wild-flowers, and the leaves of the birch-trees. Before two o'clock, the swal- lows were out of their nests. How far they had come to enjoy the spring of this remote region ! No wonder that they love that beautiful short summer."

The author's thorough liking and respect for the people among whom he travelled and lived, his sympathy with their tastes and their ways, his determination to learn Scandinavia by heart, beginning with its languages, and his abrogation of the custom of solitary meals for travellers, which at once placed him on a footing of familiarity with his hosts everywhere, give his book a distinctive character that renders it extremely in- teresting. He is a wonderfully close and comprehensive observer, and when he gets out of his boat on the Muonio to explore the country, he tells us about everything, from the trees, their uses, the trade in them, the way in which the tar is extracted and got down the rivers, to the ants, whose hills he occasionally demolished, and who, when he held up a little stick before them, would stand up on their hind-legs and seize it, " thus showing their bravery." 'On this journey, the traveller came to strangely desolate places ; ascending the Palajoki was an adventurous deed ; the Refuge Station at Aityarvi must be one of the most solitary places in the world, and the cheery old man and wife who keep the provision store for the Norwegian Government the loneliest couple since Adam and Eve. Intense heat, mos- quitoes, and want of sleep (he kept himself awake, that he might not miss any of the river scenery), seem to have only slightly tempered M. du Chaillu's enjoyment ; his narrative brims over with good-humour, and when he reaches Bosekop, on the famous Alten Fjord, he tells this pleasant story :-

" I was made welcome in every family I visited, and gave an enter- tainment to the young ladies, who had invited me to theirs, in the parlour of the hotel. Suddenly there was a pause, and all the guests looked at each other and whispered ; some of the ladies, headed by Professor Krijnlf, came towards me, and asked, in the name of the company, if I would tell them something abcut my travels in Africa, and the gorillas. It was impossible to refuse, and there, in 700 of North latitude, in the quiet parlour of the hotel at Bosekop, I delivered a lecture on the equatorial regions of Africa, before as pleasant an assembly of people as one would wish to meet."

The island of Magero, at whose northern extremity is the North Cape, and which has a population of twenty, afforded the traveller the strange spectacle of cows, sheep, and goats feeding on fish. The grass is insufficient, and these animals have two daily meals of cooked and raw fish, which they devour voraciously. After a long climb, succeeding to twenty-two hours without sleep, M. du Chailln stood upon the extreme point of the North Cape, 980 feet above the sea-level. Before him lay the deep-blue Arctic Sea, as quiet as the wind, which hardly breathed upon it ; beneath and around him an indescribably dreary landscape, above him a hazy, bluish sky, the sun so pale as to be almost white. " Lower and lower," he says, "the sun sank, and as the hour of mid- night approached, it seemed for awhile to follow slowly the line of the horizon, and at that hour shone beautifully over that lonely sea and dreary land. As it disappeared, I exclaimed, from the very brink of the precipice, 'farewell to the Midnight

Sun !' I had followed it from the Gulf of Bothnia-

to the Polar Sea, and I could go no further To this- day, I have before me those dark, rugged cliffs, that dreary, silent landscape, that quiet Arctic Sea, that serene sun shining over all; and I still hear the sad murmur of the waves, beating- upon the lonely North' Cape." He was to return to those northern regions in winter, to wander with Laplanders and reindeer over snow mountains, and along frozen valleys and rivers, to see the coast lashed by tempestuous seas, and envel- oped in blinding snow-storms.

One of the most interesting portions of M. du Chaillu's hook is the record of his journey, commencing at Bodo, a small port on the coast of Norwegian Nordland, across the peninsula of Scandinavia, to the town of Sulea, 65° 4' N., in Sweden, on the Gulf of Bothnia, traversing one of the wildest and most un- inhabitable districts of Sweden and Norway, and skirting the grand glacier of Sulitelma. With the exception of a Commission of Swedish and Norwegian officials, who had made the journey several years before, M. du Chaillu was at that time- (1871) the first traveller who had undertaken it, and we do not remember to have seen any narrative of this route except his. He says :—" None should under- take the task of crossing the mountains of Qvickjock unless strong and accustomed to long marches and hardships,. for in case of bad weather the exposure is great." The superior- ity of Norway to Sweden in grandeur and picturesqueness all travellers dwell upon, but this traveller is as much in lave with one country as with the other, and equally at home among all their peoples. His transitions are at times a little bewildering. One does not quite know where one is, or where he is, even while conscientiously consulting the excellent map that lurks in a snug pocket of the first volume ; so the best way is to read right on, and not to mind. In the backwards and forwards of five years, it is very pardonable to get a little mixed, and we• are glad the author has not adopted the journal form, which, in the most skilful hands, is always monotonous and fatiguing reading.

M. du Chaillu gives a delightful description of the Salida] Valley, to which he made an excursion, before the arrival of the Lapps who were to take him from Fagerli over the mountains to- Sweden, by way of Sulitelma. Its inhabitants are among the- most primitive in Norway. They are shut out from the world ;. their valley is a scene of peace and plenty, where riches an crime are equally unknown ; its outlet is to the sea, and its in- dustry is agricultural. The people are cheerful, educated, pious,. unambitious, and healthy. It is pleasant to be assured that there is one such place left in the world, and harder to believe- in than gorillas. There is also a delightful description, too long for extract, of the Larsen family, with whom M. du Chaffin lived at Fagerli, and their grief at parting with him. " Ole, the young son," he says, " went with me up the hill, carrying my gun, and the last words I heard were loud calls to my Lapland guides to ' take care of Paul !' " Every one called him Paul, and once, at Valle, one Paul Paulsen insisted upon it that he must be a Norwegian. How else should he speak Norsk ? " Was your father also called Paul ?" the good fellow- asked. M. du Chaillu said," Yes." " Then you are Paul Paul- sen, and Norsk !" shouted the other, conclusively convinced. The first sight of the Lapp encampment, with its reindeer herds,.

was gained on descending a high hill in great cold, and with very desolate surroundings, Sulitelma bearing east. When the traveller, with his guides, reached it, an entirely novel sense and new existence awaited him. Descriptions of the Lapps and their lives are common enough, but we know of none like this,.

so friendly, sympathetic, and comprehensive. We can only indicate it to the reader, as characteristic of the author,. and of profound interest in itself. No writer has made• travel in desolate regions more attractive ; he seizes upon every object of animal and vegetable life, and be diversifies the closely descriptive portions of the work, in which useful knowledge is packed with professorial skill, with personal details, anecdotes,. and remarks, that carry the reader on in an invariably pleasant. companionship. Thus we have a description of Hohnsund, on the Umea River, of the people and the schools there, of the beau- tiful province of Angermanland, its exquisite river, and its School of Agricultural Instruction (which deserves special attention), to enliven the geological chapters, and an elaborate- treatise on the glacial period. In a very curious description of a sea-side parish in Helsingland, called Harmangar, the follow- ing account of the treatment of the poor occurs :—

" While I was chatting in one of the houses, an old man entered, dressed in a suit of new clothes, and wearing a high silk bat ; he was bidden to take a seat ; when, upon inquiry, it was whispered into my ear that he was a pauper, I could hardly believe it. In some parishes the people prefer to have no poor-houses, as there are very few paupers. Each person who has to be supported has to prove before the Haradsting that lie is too old or infirm to work, then he goes and remains six days on every farm in the parish. I was surprised to see bow kindly they were treated—in many instances, like visitors— having better food than that daily used by the family, and a good bed ; and so they go from one farm to another. They are well cared for ; it would be a great disgrace, if the report should spread that Farmer So-and-so was hard-hearted to the poor. It sometimes happens that a man is not fully able to provide for his wants, from imbecility or some other cause ; in that case, the authorities of the parish make arrangements with some of the farmers to pay a fixed sum annually, stimulating what kind of labour the man may undertake, which is generally to tend the sheep opzows, split wood, draw water ; in a word, to make himself useful initt small way."

From this, and many other things which M. du Chaffin tells us of the Swedes and Norwegians, their humanity, their charity, their courtesy, and their abiding sense of the fraternity of man- kind, it is evident that there is a great deal of practical Christi- anity in the laud of the ancient Vikings.