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14 THROUGH NORWAY WITII A KNAPSACK.
on board ? No. Money all right ? Yes. Passport
vise ? Ay, that w as it ? I knew there was something
omitted: it was the passport botheration.* To land
in a foreign country, and be subject to no annoyance
from gens (Varmes, and not even to have one’s luggage
searched (for I carried my knapsack ashore with no
other hindrance than a look and a nod from an
English-looking custom-house officer), is a new
sensation, and, on the whole, rather a disappointment. To
the true travelling Englishman, his passport is a source
of intense enjoyment: it works off all his bile; it
supplies him with an inexhaustible grumble-mine : it
affords him an opportunity of applying
uncomplimentary epithets to men in office wearing uniform, who
don’t understand English; it is a perpetual reminder
—a glaring, material demonstration—of the superiority
of English institutions, and of the personal liberty which
is the birthright of a free-born Briton. While he carries
a passport, he has always something to be disgusted
with ; something that he can denounce as un-English.
The absence of passport interference is not the only
peculiarity of a landing at Christiania, for there is an
equally remarkable absence of hotel-touters—there are
no " commissionaires" threatening to tear the
seasick traveller limb from limb. Although the arrival
of the English packet is quite an event in
Christiania, the hotel-keepers take no outward notice of it;
* I carried my passport, which had been vise by the Norwegian
Minister in London. It was merely looked at on landing, and returned
to me without delay.
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