In Norway and Sweden railway travelling is delightful—brilliantly lighted carriages, warmed but als" ventilated, good dining cars, plentiful washing apparatus with fold-up basins in every compartment. There is also no advantage in going anything but second, the only difference being that first class coupes never have more than two berths while the second-class may (they do not always) have four. It is a mi: take, however, to take the cro country connexion from Christiania to Krylbo; it only means one day saved at the cost of hurried changings and local trains. Far better to go by Stockholm—an all night run from Bergen to Christiania, another to Stockholm and day in each capital, which makes a most pleasant break in the journey. Indeed Stockholm, especially in its mantle of snow, under brilliant blue sky, is one of the world's "show" cities sight I would not willingly have missed.
Thence for two nights and a day all the length of Sweden, through of snow and ice hill and forests of fir, so like the conventional pictures of a northern winter that one was surprised to find how accurate they had been—to Haparanda. Eighteen months ago that bleak little Swedish frontier town had not been heard of by one in a million. Now there good hotel where one may breakfast after going through the Swedish Customs, which make little trouble, and abundant offici speaking English. Also while you breakfast your luggage can be sent on to Tornea for about sixpence piece, The Paw of the Bear.
Before one o'clock—and remember that Russian time is an hour ahead of Swedish, for there is n> crossing the frontier after that hour—you will be following that luggage in an open sledge across a frozen river. Well is it for those who are born to such cold if they must travel in winter. We who have hardly ever before gone further north than latitude 60 have no conception what cold means, any
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.