326 THROUGH THE FIELDS WITH LINNAEUS 



mixture of petty detail and inexactitude as to the 

 broader facts. 



I will describe Hammarby as I saw it in 1885. It 

 was June 6. I was staying at the great Stadhuset Hotel 

 at Upsala one of the few abodes in Sweden that impress 

 the traveller with any sense of luxury quartered in the 

 palatial central apartment, the one with the long plea- 

 sant balcony, double windows, and the fine rock-crystal 

 chandelier. They are used to English travellers here, 

 and pamper their self-indulgent ways. One looks out 

 upon neat streets, in which walk groups of white-capped 

 students, often singing in chorus, in the late hours of 

 evening. 



There is more verdure in Upsala than we had found 

 elsewhere in Sweden, but it was not in full leaf; they 

 were just planting out the geraniums in the beds in the 

 botanical garden. The weather was warm, but not 

 oppressively hot. The appearance of the moon startled 

 me early in the morning ; in the green sky it looked 

 like a slice of a red melon in a green dish. 



They proposed to us to take a carriage over to 

 Hammarby, hearing we intended to go there ; but we 

 wished to be alone and free, and meant to make an 

 afternoon and evening excursion of it, so we took re- 

 turn tickets to Bergsbruima, two stations on, whence 

 we should strike across-country. Everyone understood 

 where we wanted to go, and smiled, and called it ' Lin- 

 na3us's Hammarby.' 



Crossing a tributary of the FyrisS River, we walked 



