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that it is impossible any foreign charioteer should be able to
acquire it in a shorter space of time than several weeks, or perhaps
months. The same sound that is used in Italy to quicken the
horses’ pace, is employed in Sweden for the purpose of making
them halt: and it often happened that, when we were ascending
some steep hill, we uttered that or a similar sound, to encourage
the horses; when, to our great disappointment, they stopped short
instantaneously. We then had to blame ourselves for forgetting
the idiom of the Swedish language, and patiently to endure the
consequence of our mistake; while the peasants seemed astonished
at our rashness or folly in checking the exertion of the horses on
the side of a steep mountain, where the weight of the carriage
might force the animals backwards, and involve us in great
danger. At the same time, when we reflected on the unfortunate
power of habit and its effects, in the present instance, we could
not help laughing even in the midst of peril.
Another subject of commendation among the panegyrists of
Swedish travelling, but equally unfounded with that of their
praises of expedition, is cheapness. If they were to calculate
the expence of a courier, whom you must send before you on the
road to bespeak horses, if they would consider the greater
number of horses to be employed on a journey in Sweden than in one
in Germany, moreover the hire of a driver from Copenhagen, and
the expences of his return home, besides the compensation to be
made to the peasants for waiting with their horses for the arrival
of their employer; were they to take all these things into the
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