32 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINN JE US 



name at all it is difficult at first to see, for only now 

 and then a back settler's cottage is discoverable by the 

 track that leads to it through the woods, and a few 

 patches of pasture are carelessly enclosed here and 

 there by the rudely made fences of splinters stuck 

 obliquely between tall upright rods of irregular height. 

 There are nowadays, however, several manufactories 

 tucked away inside these rude forests, and served by the 

 branch railway to Wexio. About four miles further 

 lies Bappe, at the junction of the two lakes, Helgasjo 

 and Bergquarasjo, on whose borders rises the picturesque 

 ruined castle of Bergquara ; and here the father and 

 son are nearing the end of their journey. The ground 

 is smoother ; that is, there are fewer boulders than at 

 Gemla, though occasionally a huge immovable block of 

 granite stands right in the middle of a field of rye. 

 They cross a wooden bridge over the narrowest arm of 

 the smaller lake, and can see in the distance another 

 large islanded lake, with a church spire and blue hills 

 on its further shore, which lake is connected in the usual 

 Swedish labyrinthine watery manner with the Helgasjo 

 at Rappe. 



This is the approach to Wexio, a clean, white, 

 comely, empty-looking town, seated on a pretty blue 

 lake which is part of a vast general water system in 

 these parts, where there is now (in 1886) an esplanade 

 with seats; and in the evening when the fashionable 

 folks turn out to promenade it looks like any modern 

 watering-place, only prettier and pleasanter than most. 



