1TER DALECARLIUM 247 



birch trees with pale gold. The game-birds crowd 

 into the sunny spots in the early morning to warm 

 and dry their wings. The roads are soft and very bad. 

 Next morning a sharper frost strung the boughs of 

 the birch trees with icy pearls. Each leaf was out- 

 lined in white hoar-frost crystal ; sharp splinters of 

 frozen dew turned the pine-needles to rays of light, 

 glittering like spar; while by the riverside the wet 

 willow branches and the alders were hung with icicles, 

 which shook and rung against each other like frost-fairy 

 bells above the blackened river, which was covered in 

 smooth places with ice quarter o'f an inch thick. The 

 road, however, was good for travelling on. 



I [winter] make causeways, safely crost, 

 Of mud, with just a pinch of frost. 



Lowell's phrase applies to Sweden still ' Winter is the 

 mender of the highways : every road in Europe was a 

 quagmire during a good part of the year, unless it was 

 bottomed on some remains of Roman engineering.' 



With the changing of the sun's crimson into yellow 

 and then into intense white, vanished also the fairy-like 

 appearance of the crystallised groves of birches ; the air 

 first grew steamy and then hot. The ground was em- 

 purpled with the heather. 



The returning party kept the way down the noble 

 valley watered by the West Dal River to its junction 

 with the East Dal at DjursSs (Djura) on one side of the 

 river and Gagnef on the other ; they followed back the 



