60 THE FOREST LANDS OF NORTHERN RUSSIA. 



to very cold climates ; it is called the Lower Alpine 

 region, The fifth, the Higher Alpine region, lies beyond 

 this. Much of it is covered with perpetual snow; it pro- 

 duces no trees, and scarcely any vegetation whatever, 

 except a few hardy plants where the snow has disappeared. 



Mr A. G. Guillemard, writing in the Journal of Forestry 

 of September 1882, of Forest Rambles in Swedish Lapland, 

 tells : 



' An almost unbroken solitude of vast forests and wide- 

 spreading moorland, lonely lakes, and rushing rivers, with 

 lofty ranges of noble snow-mountains in the far interior, 

 dividing the watershed between the Gulf of Bothnia and 

 the Atlantic Ocean ; a " wild north land " in which the 

 solitary traveller from countries of so-called civilisation is 

 regarded with eyes of wonderment, and to which the 

 modern tourist never comes ; the home of the elk and the 

 bear, the ptarmigan and capercailzie such is the land of 

 the Lapp. A glance at the map of the country will suffice 

 to convince the intending traveller that this far-distant 

 land is eminently a land of waters, rivers innumerable 

 flowing through long strings of lakes forming its main 

 characteristic. But the four days' voyage from Stockholm 

 to Lulea at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia will speedily 

 lead him to conclude that, it must be a land of trees as 

 well, for almost every ship he meets is a timber ship, every 

 port at which his steamer touches is crowded with rafts of 

 pine-trunks, and noisy with saw-mills, and the entire coast- 

 line is densely covered with pine forest. His deduction 

 will prove to be a correct one, though the sights and 

 sounds from which he draws it are Swedish, the boundary 

 of Lapland being far up country. The cream of the forest 

 and mountain and lake scenery, and perhaps of the sport 

 as well, is to be found in the vicinity of the Stora Lule 

 river and its tributaries, a truly noble stream, which for 

 many miles above its mouth averages more than a mile in 

 width Small steamers navigate the Stora Lule for a 

 distance of a hundred miles, and at a point just ninety 



