54 TRAVELS IN THE EIGHTIES. 



nets. I had forgotten to tell them that I had 

 abundance of trout in the hut, or they would doubt- 

 less have saved themselves that trouble. However, 

 fish food was never thrown away or wasted. What 

 was not eaten at once was invariably salted down 

 wherever I happened to be, for netting, of course, can 

 only be carried on during the summer ; and it is quite 

 exceptional to find any other method adopted than 

 netting for the capture of trout or any other kind of 

 fish by the Swedish settlers in, Lapland. These nets 

 are in forty-yard lengths, four feet deep, and the 

 mesh will only admit trout of a pound in weight, so 

 that the capture of a trout over that weight, and more 

 especially by such an unheard-of thing as a rod, was 

 looked upon as quite an extraordinary event, without 

 a parallel in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. 

 Next morning fourteen trout were taken from the nets 

 laid over-night. Every little lake and pond that is 

 deep enough, and has a stream, holds fish of some sort, 

 and out of some forty-three different settlers' hamlets 

 in which I passed a night, I can recollect none with- 

 out the indispensable net. The journey was resumed 

 in the morning in a boat to the end of the lake, and 

 the luggage left to be conveyed by the man and boy 

 across the hills to the next one. Then I shouldered 

 my rod and followed the course of the river, here 

 called the Sedd-va-strom, being the Shellefteo Eiver 

 under another name. Above the Great Horn Lake 

 there are only trout and char, but in that lake and 

 below it are fourteen different sorts of fish, and some 



