Due north - 1887 Author:Maturin Murray Ballou Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Gottenburg. Ruins of Elfsborg. Gustavus Adolphus. A Wrecked Monument. The Girdle-Duellists. Emigration to America. Public and Private Ga... more »rdens. A Kindly People. The Gotha Canal Falls of Trollhatta. Dainty Wild-Flowers. Waterways. Stockholm and Lake Maelaren. Prehistoric Tokens. Iron Mines of Sweden. Pleasing Episode with Children. The Liquor Traffic Systematized. A Great Practical Charity. A Domestic Habit. One day's sail due north from Copenhagen through the Sound and the Cattegat Strait of Catti brings us to Gottenburg, the metropolis of southwestern Sweden. The Strait, which is about a hundred miles in width, is nearly twice as long, and contains many diminutive islands. Gottenburg is situated on the Gotha River, about five miles from its mouth. In passing up this water-way the old fortification of Elfsborg was observed, now dismantled and deserted, though it once did good service in the war with the Danes. Cannon-balls are still to be seen half embedded in the crumbling stonewalls, missiles which were fired from the enemy's ships. Though Gottenburg is less populous, it is commercially almost as important as Stockholm the capital, and it is appropriately called the Liverpool of Scandinavia. The town, with its eighty thousand inhabitants, has a wideawake aspect, especially in the neighborhood of the river, where the numerous well-stocked timber-yards along the wharves show that product to be a great staple of the local trade. One is agreeably prepossessed upon landing here by a certain aspect of neatness and cleanliness observable on all sides. Indeed, few foreign towns produce so favorable a first impression. The business centre is the Gustaf-Adolf-Torg, in which is situated the Bb'rs, or Exchange, decidedly the finest bu...« less