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 BLEKINGE, SMALAND, GOTHLAND, AND WISBY NORTH-EAST of Skane lies Blekinge, which has been described as the "Garden of Sweden"; it is still beautiful, in spite of the cutting down of the splendid forests that once adorned it. It may be divided into three parts—the forest, the middle, and the strand regions; a fourth would include the skerries that protect the coast. In its bay is the town of Karlskrona, Sweden's principal naval station. Blekinge has few lakes of any size, and its rivers have their falls near to the sea. The province is famous for its watering-places and spas; also, I may say, for its handsome women, who are noted for their animation. Above Blekinge is Smaland, rocky and barren—so rocky and so poor is the soil, that the people can only wrest a livelihood from it by the greatest industry and frugality. Thanks to this long struggle for existence, the peasants are so hardy that a proverb has come into being, " Smaland men and women could live on a stone.'" In one sense they do so, for many of their cosy red-timbered huts are built on the granite boulders that strew the ground—boulders that make this portion of Sweden resemble Lapland. The folk of Smaland, like their forefathers, are unspoilt by luxury or extravagance. According to an old Swedish writer: " Here, among these, people, still live the ancient Swedish honesty, an obliging spirit, a willingness to serve, and the absence of all so-called yeoman pride.'" The Swedes were always famous for their straight dealing, so much so that the term "Ehrliche Schwede" (Honest Swede) was always used by the Germans in allusion to this peculiarity of their Northern kinsmen. It was this truthfulness and reliability that made the Swedes such fine soldiers in the days of Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII., w...