72 HEROES OF SCIENCE. 



Arrived in the province of Medelpad, he ascended 

 Its highest mountain, leaving his horse *'tied to 

 an ancient Runic monumental stone." He found 

 several uncommon plants here ; and from the 

 summit, gazed on the country spread out below, 

 varied with plains and cultivated fields, villages, 

 lakes, and rivers — a most picturesque and romantic 

 region. The descent was very difficult, and even 

 dangerous. Leaving this mountain, he took his route 

 along the sea-shore, which was spread with the 

 wrecks of vessels, telling to the feeling heart of the 

 young traveller a sad tale of woe. *' How many 

 prayers, sighs, tears, vows, and lamentations — all, 

 alas ! in vain — rose to my imagination at this 

 melancholy spectacle ! " he exclaims. The sight 

 reminded him of a student who, going by sea from 

 Stockholm to Abo, experienced so severely the 

 terrors of the ocean, that he chose to walk back 

 round the head of the Bothnian Gulf, rather than 

 adventure himself again upon the deep. This 

 youth, afterwards a Professor at Abo, assumed 

 the surname of Tillands, expressive of his attach- 

 ment to terra Jirma.dLnd Linnaeus named in honour 

 of him, a plant which cannot bear wet. 



In five or six days, Linnaeus reached Hernosand, 

 the principal town of Angermania, on the Bothnian 

 Gulf, and visited a tremendously steep and lofty 

 mountain called Skula, where was a cavern, which 

 he desired to explore. Here he was within a hair's 

 breadth of a fatal accident, for one of the peasants 

 who accompanied him, in climbing up, loosened a 



