THE NORTH SWEDISH PROVINCES 159 



and to long earnestly for a companion. The mere 

 exercise of a trotting-horse in a good road, to set the 

 heart and spirits at liberty, would have been preferable 

 to the slow and tedious mode of travelling which I was 

 doomed to experience. The few inhabitants I met with 

 had a foreign accent, and always concluded their sen- 

 tences with an adjective. Here grew a willow l very 

 hairy all over ; its catkins were for the most part 

 advanced and faded. 



' In the evening I arrived at Jamtboht, where some 

 women were sitting employed in cutting the bark of the 

 aspen tree into small pieces scarcely an inch long and not 

 half so broad. The bark is stript from the tree just when 

 the leaves begin to sprout, and laid up in a place under 

 the roof of a house till autumn or the following spring, 

 when it is cut up to serve as good for cows, goats, and 

 sheep, instead of hay, a very scarce article in these 

 parts, for the fields consist principally of marshy tracts 

 with coarse herbage. On my inquiring what I could 

 have for supper they set before me the breast of a cock 

 of the wood (Tetrao Urogallus), which had been shot 

 and dressed some time the preceding year. Its aspect 

 was not inviting, and I imagined the flavour would 

 be not much better, but I was mistaken. The taste 

 proved delicious, and I wondered at the ignorance of 

 those who, having more fowls than they know how 

 to dispose of, suffer many of them to be quite spoiled, 

 as often happens at Stockholm. After the breast is 

 1 Sallx lanata. 



