IVASTGOTA RESA ROUND LAKE VENERN 167 



the inn at Safwa, Lislena, and Enkoping on his first 

 day's ride of twenty-five English miles, and gives their 

 distances apart in Swedish reckoning. He had already 

 analysed and recorded the natural history of this part 

 of the country ; the pretty scenery and market gardens 

 of Enkoping were familiar to him. His notion of fine 

 sights was founded on such splendid objects as an 

 orange- tipped butterfly pitched on a dandelion, which 

 he would pull up his horse to look at at least, so the 

 students' chaff went. He put up for the night at 

 Niquarn, on the border of Westmanland, and set off for 

 Westerns with early morning. He does not stay to 

 describe Westerns; but we who are not in such a hurry 

 to get on may as well have a look round it. When I 

 was here, at the same time of year as Linnaeus, the 

 lake was like ink the ink of the country, which is 

 never black, but green or purple in a fortuitous ^w ay, 

 like hair-dye ; the gardens as one went up the hill to 

 the town were foaming with white apple-blossom and 

 plum. 1 The Persian lilac was only in bud. The 

 river here runs over a weir like those at Upsala. From 

 a bridge, at another point, one gains a curious view, 

 over the dyked river, of rows of wooden houses built on 

 a rude stone embankment, with wooden forecourts, or a 

 sort of galleries; a beam swinging by most of the 

 houses hoists a copper bucket from the rather ill- 

 flavoured stream into the gallery. Above these houses 

 peeps the tall cathedral spire, which from here looks 

 1 White apple-blossom is more common than pink in Scandinavia. 



