The pine. 43 



it conspicuous lonnj before we reached the river. 

 Close to the principal cataract stood a sawinf^-mill, 

 worked by an overshot wheel, so situate as to be 

 kept in motion by a stream of water diverted from its 

 channel for this purpose. The remarkable situation 

 of the savving^-niills, by the different cataracts, both in 

 Sweden and Norway, are amonc;' the most extraordi- 

 nary sights a traveller meets with. The mill here 

 was as rude and as picturesque an object as it is 

 possible to imagine. It was built with the unplaned 

 trunks of large fir trees, as if brought down and 

 heaped together by the force of the river. The saws 

 are fixed in sets, parallel to each other ; the spaces 

 between them in each set being adapted to the in- 

 tended thickness for the planks. A whole tree is thus 

 divided into planks, by a simultaneous operation, in 

 the same time that a single plank would be cut by 

 one of the saws. We found that ten planks, each ten 

 feet in length, were sawed in five minutes, one set of 

 saws working through two feet of timber in a single 

 minute. A ladder, sloping from the mill into the 

 midst of the cataract, rested there upon a rock, which 

 enabled us to take a station in the midst of the roaring 

 waters. On all sides of the cataract, close to its fall, 

 and high above it and far below it, and in the midst 

 of the turbulent flood, tall pines waved their shadowy 

 branches, wet with the rising dews. Some of these 

 trees were actually thriving upon naked rocks, from 

 which the dashing foam of the torrent was spreading 

 in wide sheets of spray." 



In some parts of Sweden there are accidental fires, 

 and the pines are also sometimes burned, in order to 

 clear the soil for agriculture. In the account of his 

 journey from Stockholm, northward. Dr. Clarke says, 

 " As we proceeded to Hamrange, we passed through 

 noble avenues of trees, and saw some fine lakes on 

 either side of the road. Some of the forests had been 



