WASTGOTA RESA ROUND LAKE VENERN 17 1 



Sweden, at 4 P.M. He was hungry : now for dinner ! 

 He spies the door of an inn. It was shut, being Sunday. 

 He rode round by the back-yard and put up his horse. 

 The inn is stcincj (shut, extinct) till seven ; now it is 

 four. No dinner is to be had. Linnaeus knew the 

 customs of his country too well to grumble as we poor 

 foreign wretches do who arrive at or depart hungry 

 from siting places in Sweden especially on Sundays, 

 when the bakers' shops are shut too. Many inns are 

 siting daily from four to seven or eight. Though he 

 missed the rhubarb stewed with tapioca and served 

 with whipped cream of his own home, he was an old 

 traveller and could do without delicacies. He sought 

 and found a milk-shop, and quaffed a bowl of milk 

 accompanied by a basketful of rusks, and went out to 

 see the town and go to church. He had not been in 

 the church many minutes when ( Se stanga, se stanga ' 

 sounded in his ears, and, sure enough, they were lock- 

 ing the church up : so that too was siting. The elegant 

 town-hall of Orebro, with its pointed-arched fapade, did 

 not then exist, but the grand old castle situated on an 

 island in the river this strong square slott (castle) with 

 four round towers above the bridge was then, as at any 

 time since 1500, the glory of the town. The church 

 bells began to ring again at 5.30. 



On to MosSs, on the 16th, by the Mosjo Lake and 

 through the great dreary forests of Tifwedem and Sand- 

 heide to the lake and village of Bodarne. He entered 

 West Gothland on June 17. Here his real diary begins. 



