Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. — a Memoir by Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
page 101 of 274 (36%)
page 101 of 274 (36%)
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roving tour through the greater part of Scandinavia, and his journals
contain a daily record, extending over nearly six months. He crossed the Dovrefeld Range between Norway and Sweden (a journey seldom undertaken to-day), and in 1828 the lack of travelling facilities was exceptional. The energy and resource of my father's character and his great powers of observation appear to great advantage in these journals, and there are many facts which I shall endeavour to relate as far as possible in his own graphic words. He was greatly impressed by the kindness and hospitality he received from all classes in both countries with the exception of one district near Gottenborg, where he met with some outrageous conduct on the part of a postmaster, who either thought he was robbed, or else fully intended to rob his guest. He was honoured by interviews with King Charles John IV, better known as Bernadotte, Napoleon's Field-Marshal and founder of the present royal dynasty of Sweden, and it is worthy of note that as far back as 1828, Norway was chafing under the Union with Sweden which was brought about by the Treaty of Kiel in 1814 and has so lately been dissolved. On the 10th of May 1828, Captain Yorke started from the Customs House Wharf on the Thames, in a small steamer of 300 tons. Steam navigation being then in its infancy the vessel was of great interest to the traveller, who notes that she had 'two very fine engines of 40 horse power!' The passage to Hamburg took exactly fifty-five hours. It is curious in the light of eighty years' commercial progress to read that 'The |
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