454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



into marked relief all the incidents of the view. There is something 

 bracing in the very appearance of the landscape, to which the noble 

 river is an ever-fitting foreground. 



At Storbachen the river has to be exchanged for the road, and a 

 country cart holding two persons, and with or without an apology 

 for springs as chance may determine, carries the tourist along the 

 banks of the Little LuleJi to Jockmock, a distance of some thirty 

 miles. This drive is in itself a unique experience. The road after 

 wet weather is cut up into deep ruts, in and out of which the cart 

 plunges with a violence most discomforting to its occupants, who are 

 bruised and pounded without the possibility of resistance. It must 

 be admitted that the process detracts from the pleasure of the excur- 

 sion, which in other respects is extremely interesting. The route 

 lies for the whole day through the almost trackless forests. Hardly 

 a human being is to be met in these immense solitudes, and the si- 

 lence is only broken occasionally by the note of some strange bird 

 or the movement of the wind through the trees. In many places 

 forest-fires have ravaged the country for great distances, and every- 

 where there is a vista of blackened stems or falling trunks. In con- 

 trast to this desolation, where the fire has not passed, the ground is 

 carpeted with the most luxuriant mosses and lichens in all the tints 

 of green and red and yellow, while an occasional clearing, though at 

 very rare intervals, relieves from time to time a sense of utter loneli- 

 ness by the evidence it gives of the neighborhood of human beings. 



The forests cover nearly one-half of the whole surface of Sweden, 

 and constitute an important part of the wealth of the country and 

 the revenue of the Government. In past times they were very care- 

 lessly managed, and in many cases were sold outright and without 

 conditions to merchants, who ruthlessly cut down the timber with 

 sole regard to their immediate interests. The pine is of very slow 

 growth, increasing only one inch in diameter in ten years, and reach- 

 ing twelve to fourteen inches in a century; and the wholesale destruc- 

 tion of young wood has left large tracts desolate and unprofitable for 

 an indefinite period. The soil is excessively poor, consisting of sand 

 with the thinnest possible coating of vegetable mould, so that no or- 

 dinary cultivation is possible. 



Now the forests are strictly looked after, and no land is sold ; but 

 the right of cutting wood, limited to trees of ten inches and upward 

 in diameter, is let for a term of years and by tender, at so much per 

 tree. In the remote districts the royalty is about Is. 3d. per tree, 

 and the lessees have in addition to carry out works for deepening the 

 rivers and keeping them clear of all obstructions. Twenty years ago 

 the value of trees on the ground was not more than threepence or 

 fourpence apiece. 



From Jockmock to the end of the journey at Quickjock the mode 

 of traveling and the scenery are again changed. The head-waters of 



