Another stretch of the canal brought us to Lake Roxen, a wide and beautiful expanse, the passage through it requiring an hour. At the western end of it is the town of Berg, where a hill is to be surmounted by a series of locks, eleven in number, opening one into another, and the process requires so much time that we can leave the ship and make an excursion to an interesting and ancient church in the neighborhood. It is the Vetra-Kloster, Gothic in style, and built in 1128, when Inge II. was king in Sweden, and he is buried in it. The Douglas family of Scotland, in the time of Cromwell, came to this place to find a safe retreat, and they became famous in the wars of Sweden. They are interred right royally in this sanctuary. The mansion they occupied stands conspicuously on the borders of the beautiful lake, commanding splendid views of this lovely scenery. Villages are scattered over a rich country, and the spires of churches pointing heavenward tell the pious hopes of a people whose God is the Lord. The church stands in the midst of a large graveyard, and this is filled with flowers and shrubs and shade trees, and the monumental stones bear dates of great antiquity. The portal of the church was once the prison of a convent which was attached to the church, for this was built when Romanism ruled this region as well as southern Europe. The floor is of stone, and the aisles are of tombstones bearing inscriptions in German, Swedish, and Latin; epigrammatic and striking some of them are, and have silently preached to the passer-by for some centuries. “_Mors certa, hora incerta_,” and “_Hodie mihi, cras tibi_,” are not very sententious, but they have their point on a gravestone. In a stone sarcophagus of very singular form, with a long inscription upon it, lies the body of Inge II.; wooden effigies of unknown personages, divine or human alike unintelligible to me, keep the dead monarch company in his sleep of the ages. Another chapel contains two sarcophagi, in which side by side through successive centuries the royal ashes rest of those whose names are now forgotten, but might be spelled out, if it were worth the trouble. And in another chapel are the tombs of the Scotch Douglases, who fled their own country and found glory and graves, that’s all, in this retired spot in the heart of Sweden. For this is purely a rural church, far from the town and all the busy haunts of men, a fitting place for worship, and a comely spot for graves. It has been used for both, more than seven hundred years. The avarice of man has not encroached upon its acres, nor coveted its stones.