162 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



It often happened that above one of these sandy 

 heaths lay another equally barren. The interstices of 

 the country between these embanked heaths were 

 occupied by water, rocks, and marshes, producing 

 abundance of firs, intermixed with some birches, all 

 covered with black and white filamentous lichens. The 

 few small juniper bushes were all close pressed to the 

 ground. At Abacken, and on the road beyond it for a 

 considerable way, some loose ice still remained, which 

 surprised me much at this season of the year ; 1 yet I 

 recollected I had but a week before met with snow near 

 Mount Skula. 



1 Nothing but water can be had to drink. Against 

 the walls of the houses an agaric, shaped like a 

 horse's hoof, 2 was hung up to serve as a pincushion. As 

 a protection against rain the people wear a broad hori- 

 zontal collar made of birch bark, fastened round the 

 neck with pins. 



1 The women wash their houses with a kind of 

 brush made of twigs of spruce fir which they tie to the 

 right foot and scrub the floor with it. The peasants, 

 instead of tobacco, smoke the buds of hops, or sometimes 

 juniper berries or the juniper bark. 



' In the evening I reached Texnas in the parish of 

 Umea 1 . Seven miles ' [Swedish] c distant from this place 

 is the church, the road to which is execrable, so that 

 the people are obliged to set out on Friday morning 

 to get to church on Sunday. On this account they can 



1 This is June in the New Style. z Boletus igniarius. 



