Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 309

In India the tamarind-tree is a very beautiful object, its spreading branches flinging even with their tiny leaves an extensive shade. In one season its pretty straw-coloured flowers refresh the eye; and in another its long brown pods, which are shed plentifully, afford a more substantial refreshment to the traveller. The Hindoos, however, prize it chiefly as a material for cleaning their brass vessels, although they likewise use it as a condiment for their curries and other dishes, and likewise make it into pickles and preserves. For the last-mentioned purpose a red variety is the most esteemed, both the timber and the fruit being of a sanguine hue. The tamarind, however, is chiefly planted by the roadside, or on the rising banks of a tank; and in the lower parts of Bengal, where it grows in the natural forests of the Sunderbunds, it is the most common kind of firewood, being never used for any more dignified purpose. The native never chooses this beautiful tree, as he does the palm, the neem, or the mourungosh, to overshadow his hut; and it is never admitted into the mango groves sacred to the gods, although the silk-cotton and the mouwha are not forbidden that consecrated ground.

But the prejudice goes further still. No khitmutgar, or cook, will hang a piece of meat on a tamarind-tree: he believes that meat thus exposed does not keep well, and that it becomes unfit for salting. A traveller, though very willing to eat of the fruit, will not unload his pack or rest under its branches; and a soldier, tired as he may be with a long march, will rather wander farther on than pile his arms in its shade. There is an idea, in fact, at least in Bengal, that there is something unlucky or unhealthy, some antique spell or some noxious vapour, surrounding this beautiful tree; although we are not aware that science has yet discovered that there is anything really hurtful in its exhalations.

Another strange notion connected with the tamarind-tree is thus mentioned by a correspondent: – 'Often have I stood as a youngster gazing with astonishment at a couple of bearers belabouring a large knotty root, of some eight feet in girth, with their axes, making the chips fly off in every direction; which, upon picking up, I used to find covered over with unintelligible scribbles, which the bearers gravely told me was the writing of the gods.'

Here we have our tree in a new light: this outcast from the sacred groves is inscribed with holy characters! Who shall interpret their meaning? Are they like the mark set upon the forehead of Cain? Or is the legend intended as a perpetual consolation under the prejudices and indignities of men? All we know is, that the white fir-like grains of the tamarind wood are written over in an unknown tongue by means of a small thread-like vein of a black colour.

There is a similar superstition connected with another Indian tree, the kulpa briksha, or silver-tree, so called from the colour of the bark. The original kulpa, which now stands in the garden of the god Indra in the first heaven, is said to have been one of the fourteen remarkable things turned up by the churning of the ocean by the gods and demons. But however this may be, the name of Ram and his consort Seeta is written upon the silvery trunks of all its earthly descendants! Colonel Sleeman, when travelling in Upper India, had the curiosity to examine many of these trees on both sides of the road; and sure enough the name of the incarnation of Vishnu mentioned was plainly enough discernible, written in Sanscrit characters, and apparently by some supernatural hand – 'that is, there was a softness in the impression, as if the finger of some supernatural being had traced the characters.' The traveller endeavoured to argue his attendants out of their senses; but unluckily he could find no tree, however near or distant, without the names; the only difference being in the size of the letters, which in some cases were large, and in others small. At length he observed a kulpa in a hollow below the road, and one on a precipice above, both in situations accessible with such difficulty, that he was sure no mortal scribe would take the trouble to get at them. He declared confidently his opinion that the names would not be found on these trees, and it was proved that he was right. But this was far from affecting the devout faith of his Hindoo followers. 'Doubtless,' said one, 'they have in some way or other got rubbed off; but God will renew them in His own time.' 'Perhaps,' remarked another, 'he may not have thought it necessary to write at all upon places where no traveller could decipher them.' 'But do you not see,' said the traveller, losing patience, 'that these names are all on the trunk within reach of a man's hand?' 'Of course they are,' replied they, 'since the miracle could not be distinguished by the eyes of men if they were written higher up!'

A shrub called the trolsee is a representation of the same goddess Seeta, and is every year married with great ceremony to a sacred stone called Saligram, a rounded pebble supposed to represent the good Vishnu, of whom Ram was an incarnation. On one occasion described, the procession attending this august ceremony consisted of 8 elephants, 1200 camels, and 4000 horses, all mounted and elegantly caparisoned. Above 100,000 persons were present at this pageant, at which the little pebble was mounted on the leading elephant, and thus carried in state to his tree goddess. All the ceremonies of a Hindoo marriage were gone through, and then the god and goddess were left to repose together till the next season in the temple of Sudora.

Indian trees, however, it must be said, are, from all accounts, much more worthy of the honours of superstition than those of less fervid climes. A traveller mentions an instance of the 'sentient principle' occurring among the denizens of an Indian forest. Two trees, he tells us, of different kinds, although only three feet apart, had grown to the height of fifty or sixty feet, when one of them took the liberty of throwing out a low branch in such a way as to touch the trunk of his neighbour, and thus occasion much pain and irritation. 'On this the afflicted tree in turn threw out a huge excrescence, which not only enveloped the offending branch, but strangled it so completely as to destroy it utterly; the ends of the deadened boughs projecting three or four feet beyond the excrescence, while the latter was carried on a distance of three feet across to the shaft of the tree, so as to render all chances of its future movement wholly impossible!' This appears to our traveller to display as much forethought and sagacity as taking up an artery for aneurism, or tying splints round a broken bone.

But in a country where trees are the objects of such veneration, and where those that are neither holy nor sagacious are admitted without scruple to the best arborical society, how comes it that the beautiful, the umbrageous, and the beneficent tamarind is looked upon as the outlaw of the plantation, the pariah of the forest? This is a very puzzling circumstance, and one that, in the present state of our knowledge, we can only set down to the caprice and ingratitude of man.

TRACINGS OF THE NORTH OF EUROPE

CHRISTIANIA TO LAURGAARD

A land journey of 334 English miles, which usually occupies five or six days, was now before me. The road passes along one of the finest as well as most extensive valleys in Norway, and is further distinguished by crossing the celebrated range of mountains called the Dovre Field [Dovre pronounced Dovra], which may be called the backbone of the country, as the Grampian range is that of the Scottish Highlands. Along this road, as usual, there is a series of stations, but none of them is of so high a character as to present the luxury of wheaten bread. One of my duties, therefore, on the last day of my stay in Christiania, was to obtain a bag of biscuits for use on the way. Being anxious to secure a passage in a steamer which was to leave Trondheim on the 18th July, I allowed seven days for the journey, and started at one o'clock on the 11th, thus allowing an extra day for any accidental delay upon the road.

The first two or three stages being across certain intermediate valleys, we have much up-hill and down-hill work along roads by no means good. It was pitiable to see the little heavy-laden carts of the peasantry toiling up the steep ascents, each with its forked pike trailing behind it, on which to rest the vehicle, while the horse should stop a few minutes at a time to recover breath and strength. Many were conducted by women; and I could not but admire the hardy, independent air of these females, as they sat, whip in hand, urging their steeds along, though, as might be expected from such a rough out-of-door life, their figures exhibit little of the attractions of their sex. At many places I found rock-surfaces with dressings generally in a north and south direction, being that of the valleys. It is not unworthy of remark that two of the rivers are crossed by modern wooden bridges, where a pontage is paid; and these were the only charges approaching to the character of a toll to which I was subjected throughout the whole of my travels in Scandinavia. Of the valleys, one is full of sandy, a second of clay terraces, marking some decided difference in the former submerged condition of the two districts. On passing into a third at Trygstad, we find a vast plateau composed of clay below and pure sand above, bearing magnificent pine-forests, and which extends, without any intermission, to the foot of the Miösen Lake. It would be a curious study to any native geologist to examine this formation, and to trace its source, and the circumstances under which it was deposited. There are remarkable generalities about such things. Instructed by what I had seen in Scotland, as soon as I observed the valley filled with sand up to a certain height a few miles below where I knew a lake to be, I mentally predicted that this formation would terminate at the foot of the lake, and that there would be no terraces on the hill-sides above that sheet of water. Such proved to be the case.

A short stage before reaching the foot of the Miösen Lake, we pass one of those objects so extraordinary in Norway – a country mansion; that is to say, a handsome house adapted for the residence of a family in affluent circumstances. It is called Eidsvold, and was once the property of a family named Anker, but now belongs to the public, in consequence of the interesting distinction conferred on it in 1814, when a national assembly sat here and framed the constitution under which the country is now so happily placed. The purchase of this house by a national subscription is an agreeable circumstance, as it marks that deep and undivided feeling which the Norwegian people entertain regarding their constitution – a feeling perhaps more important than the character of the constitution itself, as it is what mainly secures its peaceful working. This constitution has now stood for thirty-five years, with a less amount of dissent and dissatisfaction on the part of the people than has happened in the case of any other experiment of the same kind in modern Europe. It is entitled to be regarded as a successful experiment; and, as such, of course may well be viewed with some interest by the rest of Europe, especially at a time when so many political theories are on their trial, and so few seem likely to stand good. The main fact is the election, every three years, of a body called the Storthing, which separates itself into an Upper and Lower House, enacts and repeals laws, and regulates all matters connected with the revenue. The royal sanction is required for these laws; but if the people are bent upon any measure disapproved of by the king, they have only to re-introduce and pass it in two more successive Storthings, when it would become law without the royal assent. Thus the Norwegians may be said, in Benthamian language, to minimise the monarchical principle. But how is the Storthing constituted? The right of voting depends on a low property qualification. The qualified voters in small districts elect persons called election-men, who again meet by themselves, and elect, usually, but not necessarily, out of their own number, representatives of larger districts, who in turn form the Storthing, the whole numbers of which are somewhat under a hundred. It is a system of universal suffrage, exclusive only of the humblest labouring-class. It may be said to be a government of what we call the middle-classes, and all but a pure democracy; but it is essential to observe that the bulk of the people of Norway are of the kind which we recognise as a middle-class, for of hereditary nobility they have none, and the non-electors are a body too humble in circumstances, and too well matched in numbers by the rest, to have any power for good or evil in the case. There are other important considerations: land is held in Norway, not upon the feudal, but the udal principle, which harmonises much better with democratic forms; there being no right of primogeniture, estates are kept down at a certain moderate extent; in the general circumstances of the country, there can be no massing of wealth in a few hands, and therefore little of that species of influence. The apparently ultra-liberal system of Norway being thus adapted to many things more or less peculiar to the country, it may have attained a success here which it would not obtain elsewhere, or at least not till a proper groundwork had been laid in social arrangements. This is a proposition which seems to derive much support from recent political failures in Germany, Italy, and, shall we add, France? The abrupt decreeing of a democratic constitution, in supersession of a government which has been absolute for centuries, is seen to be an absurdity, though one, perhaps, which nothing but experiment could have demonstrated.

It was still far from night when I arrived at Minde, at the foot of the Miösen Lake. This sheet of water, sixty-three English miles in length, terminates here in a curve formed in the sandy plateau, through which its waters have made for themselves a deep trench. The little inn nestles under the steep bank on the west side of the outlet, commanding from its back-windows a view along the lake. As the point where the river must be ferried, and whence the steamers start on their course along the lake, it is a place of some importance. It has even been proposed to have a railway from Christiania to Minde, and the ground has been surveyed by Mr Robert Stephenson; but this is not likely to be realised for some years to come. I found the porch of the inn filled with guests enjoying their pipes; two or three of them were officers, and one of these, I was told, had the duty of superintending the post stations of a certain district. Amongst others was one of those dirty young men of the student genus who are so prevalent on the continent; travelling with only a little satchel slung from their shoulders, and thus evidently unprovided with so much as a change of linen or a set of night-clothes, yet always sure to be found lugging along a tobacco-pipe half as big as themselves, together with a formidable pouch of tobacco depending from a button-hole. The inn consisted of two floors, in the lower of which was a good-sized public room, gay with prints of the royal family and such-like; from this on one side went off two bedrooms; on the other adjoined a kitchen, and other family apartments. Stables, sheds, and storehouses of various denominations stood near by, so as to form what Allan Ramsay calls a rural square. It was a comfortable establishment, and the females who conducted it were respectable-looking people. There was also a landlord, who was always coming in, apparently under an anxiety to do something, but never did it. I had a good meal served up in the public room, and enjoyed the evening scene on the lake very greatly, but found the occasional society of the other guests in this apartment disagreeable, in consequence of their incessant smoking, and their habit of frequent spitting upon the floor. It is seldom that I find associates in inns who come up to my ideas of what is right and proper in personal habits. The most of them indulge, more or less, in devil's tattooing, in slapping of fingers, in puffing and blowing, and other noises anomalous and indescribable, often apparently merely to let the other people in the room know that they are there, and not thinking of anything in particular. Few seem to be under any sense of the propriety of subduing as much as possible all sounds connected with the animal functions, though even breathing might and ought to be managed in perfect silence. In Norway the case is particularly bad, as the gentlemen, in addition to everything else, assume the privilege of smoking and spitting in every room of every house, and even in the presence of ladies.2 To a sensible and wellbred person all such things are as odious as they are unnecessary. It is remarkable throughout the continent how noisily men conduct themselves. They have not our sense of quietness being the perfection of refined life. At Minde a gentleman over my head made an amount of noise with his luggage and his personal movements which astonished me, for it created the idea of a vast exertion being undergone in order to produce it, as if it had been thought that there was some important object to be served by noise, and the more noise the better.

I had intended to proceed next morning by the steamer along the lake, but I had been misinformed as to the days of sailing, and found it necessary to spend my reserve day at Minde. It was less of a hardship to me than it might have been to others, as I found more than enough of occupation in examining the physical geography of the district. The sandy plain runs up to the hills on both sides at an exceedingly small angle of inclination, and perfectly smooth. On the east side, near a place called Œvre, there is, close to the hills, a stripe of plain of higher inclination, and composed of gravel, so that the whole is exceedingly like that kind of sea-beach which consists partly of an almost dead flat of sand, and partly of a comparatively steep though short slope of gravel, adjoining to the dry land. That the sea did once cover this plain, and rise against the gravel slope, I could have no doubt: the whole aspect of the objects spoke of it. There were also terraces in the valley below, indicating pauses in the subsidence (so to speak) of the sea. It was of some importance, since the point formerly reached by the sea could here be so clearly marked, to ascertain how high that point was above the present sea-level. My measurements, which were conducted with the level and staff, using the lake as a basis, set it down as just about 656 feet above the sea, being, as it chances, the height of an ancient sea-terrace at Bardstadvig, on the west coast of Norway, and also that of certain similar terraces in Scotland.3 This coincidence may be accidental, but it is worthy of note, as possibly a result of causes acting to a general effect, more especially as it is not in this respect quite solitary.

The dinner presented to me on the day of my stay at Minde might be considered as the type of such a meal bespoken at a tolerable country inn in Norway. It consisted of a dish of fried trout from the lake, with melted butter-sauce, and something like Yorkshire pudding to take with it: no more animal food, but a dish of cream prepared in a manner resembling trifle, and accompanied by a copious supply of an over-luscious warm jelly; finally, a salad. It is common in small Norwegian inns to put down, with one dinner-like dish, a large bowl of what we call in Scotland lappered milk, but bearing a creamy surface, along with sugar: it seems to be a favourite regale with the natives; but I never could get into a liking for it. In the clear warm day which I spent in the Minde inn, the lake presented a beautiful placid scene; a boat was now and then seen rowing lazily across its mirror-like surface; but more generally nothing studded the silver sheet but the image of a passing summer cloud.

In my rambles to-day I saw many of the peasantry, and the interiors of a few of their houses. The women are poor-looking creatures, dressed in the most wretched manner. They want the smart taste seen even among the poorest young females farther south, as is particularly evidenced in their head-dress, which consists merely of a coarse handkerchief tied under the chin – a sort of apology for a hood rather than a head-dress. There are great differences in the interiors of the peasants' houses; but certainly many of them are miserable little cabins. As yet, I see few symptoms of a prosperous life for the labouring-class in Norway. It is different with the peasant proprietors or yeomen, called bonder in their own country. The house of a bonde is a long, double-storeyed, wooden house, painted a dull red or yellow, with gauze window-curtains, and very neatly furnished within. The life of this class – the leading class of Norwegian society – seems generally comfortable, though not to the degree which is alleged in the glowing pages of Mr Laing; for they are very often embarrassed by debt, mostly incurred in order to pay off the claims of brothers and sisters to their inheritance. At present, the labouring-class are leaving Norway in considerable numbers to settle in America. There is one particular district in Wisconsin which they flock to, and which, I am told, contains at least 6000 of these poor people. A government officer, whom I conversed with at Christiania, says it is owing to the superabundant numbers of the people. The land, he alleges, has been brought to the utmost stretch of its productive power. Meanwhile, to use his expression, there is trop du mariage: the food being insufficient for the constantly-increasing numbers, they must needs swarm off. There is a like emigration of the humbler class of peasantry from Sweden. Thus we see that equally in the simple state of things which prevails in Scandinavia, and in the high-wrought system of wealthy England, there is but a poor life for the hireling unskilled labourer. Nowhere does it afford more than a bare subsistence; often scarcely gives this.

The weather was now becoming very warm, while, with the increasing latitude, the day was sensibly lengthening. On the evening of the 12th of July I went to bed at ten o'clock under a single sheet, with the window fully up, and read for an hour by the natural light. Next morning at six I went on board the Jernbarden steamer, and was speedily on my way along the Miösen Lake. A raft behind contained my own and another carriage. It proved a pleasant day's sailing, though there is nothing very striking in the scenery of the lake. The gentlemen sauntered about, or sat upon deck, constantly smoking from their long pipes. There were a few ladies, who seemed not at all discomposed by the smoke, or any of its consequences. A tall old general of infantry, in a dark cloak, exhausted I know not how many pipes, and his servant seemed to have little to do but to fill the tube afresh from a poke of chopped tobacco not much less than a nose-bag. Notwithstanding these barbarian practices, there is a vast amount of formal politeness among the native gentlemen and ladies; there is an incessant bowing and taking off of hats; and whenever one is to leave the vessel, he bids adieu to the company, though he perhaps never met one of them before. The captain could converse in English, as is the common case in steamers throughout Norway and Sweden, this gift being indeed held as an indispensable qualification for the appointment. I had also some conversation with the engineer, an intelligent German, who had been some years in England. Along with these circumstances, the idea that the engines had been made in Glasgow caused me to feel more at home on the Miösen Lake than I could have expected. We had, however, a more tedious voyage than usual, in consequence of the drag upon the vessel's movements which we carried behind us, and we consequently did not reach the landing-place beneath the town of Lillehammer till four o'clock.

This being the only town between Christiania and Trondheim, I was desirous of stopping at it; but we had left ourselves barely enough of time to reach the station of a steamer at the foot of a second and smaller lake a few miles onward, by which I hoped to make out a hundred miles of travelling before we should sleep, and thus leave myself comparatively at ease about the remainder of the journey. I therefore reluctantly drove through this pleasant-looking little place. Soon after leaving Lillehammer, the hills, which as yet had been low and rather tame, became steep and rough. We pass along the left bank of the Laug, a large, fierce, and rapid stream, of that green colour which indicates an origin among snow-clad mountains. My journey might now have been described by a line from a Scottish poet – 'By Logan's streams that run sae deep' – for, by the usual affix of the article en, the name of this river is sounded Logan, and thus is identical with a name attached to more than one stream in Scotland.4 Nor is this, by the way, a solitary case. The river which enters the sea at Trondheim is the Nid, identical with the Nith of Dumfriesshire fame. Even the generic name for a river in Norway, elv, or, with the article, elven, appears in our numerous tribe of Elvans, Alwynes, Allans, Evans, and Avons.