134 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



garn is five miles ' [Swedish] i broad. From the north to 

 the south cape it is fifteen miles ' [Swedish] l long. 1 The 

 hill by the church is pretty high, and steep on all sides. 

 From this hill on the north-east is a splendid view, ex- 

 tending from the church at the base of the hill, over the 

 woods and cornland broken by hills, the sea bays, and 

 the blue sea as far as St. Olofsholm. It would not be easy 

 in Gothland to find a more agreeable site for a country 

 house. 



' Allskog Church lies in a situation where Nature 

 herself has drawn a boundary between the north and 

 south part of the island. Here it is chalk; to the 

 southward it is mostly sand and clay. At Lye Church, 

 a daughter parish of Allskog, we tried to read a runic 

 stone we had heard of. Pastor Neugard, in Ostergarn, 

 had caused it to be written anew. This stone is re- 

 markable, as it was inscribed in the time of Queen 

 Margaret, and gives the date 1409. The characters 

 show it to be one of the most recent of these stones. 

 We slept at Garde. 



' Towards evening my travelling-companions re- 

 freshed themselves with games &c. J Linnaeus himself 

 evidently did not do so he writes too many natural- 

 history descriptions to have spare time to devote to 

 games. Travelling now on the ' star ' system, as he 

 did, he was everything ; the rest were supers, dummies, 

 Largo al factotum. 



1 Gothland is about seventy English miles long by twenty to 

 thirty-live in breadth. 



