The peasants' cottages were larger and better than those in Norway; they are generally painted brick-red, and are often built in groups.
The first lock is at Lilla Edet: there are five here; and while the ship passes through them, the passengers have leisure to admire the contiguous low, but broad and voluminous fall of the Gotha.
This first batch of locks in the canal extends over some distance past the fall, and they are partly blasted out of the rock, or built of stone.
The river past Akestron flows as through a beautiful park; the valley is hemmed in by fertile hills, and leaves space only for the stream and some picturesque paths winding along its shores, and through the pine-groves descending to its banks.
In the afternoon we arrived at the celebrated locks near Trollhatta.
They are of gigantic construction, which the largest states would be honoured in completing, and which occasion surprise when found in a country ranking high neither in extent nor in influence.

There are eleven locks here, which rise 112 feet in a space of 3500 feet.

They are broad, deep, blasted out of the rock, and walled round with fine freestone.

They resemble the single steps of a giant's staircase; and by this name they might fitly rank as one of the wonders of the world.

Lock succeeds lock, mighty gates close them, and the large vessel rises miraculously to the giddy heights in a wildly romantic country.
[Picture: Falls of Trollhatta] Scarcely arrived at the locks, the traveller is surrounded by a crowd of boys, who offer their services as guides to the waterfalls near Trollhatta.