34 A SPRING AND SUMMER IN LAPLAND. 



day in fact, the first was the worst day we had 

 all the way up. 



We had now come into the mining country, and 

 the character of the landscape just to the north 

 of the town where the great Persberg iron mines 

 lie, was bleak and barren in the extreme. A 

 mining district is always dreary enough, and as 

 we drove by these mines in the morning, and 

 looked down the dark yawning chasms, which we 

 passed within a few feet, icicles twenty feet long 

 hanging down from their sides, I fairly shuddered, 

 for a slip of the horse's feet on the ice-covered 

 road might have precipitated us down a pit many 

 hundred feet deep. 



The next day was a kind of holiday, a sort of 

 "bye Sunday," of which they have many in 

 Sweden during the course of the year ; not that 

 anybody appears to consider it a religious day, 

 but only a sort of excuse for knocking off work 

 and wearing their Sunday clothes. The weather 

 was fine and clear, and as soon as we had left the 

 iron mines a much prettier country opened upon 

 our view ; and on this day we passed through the 

 only really deep forest on our road. The sledging 

 was first-rate, but we made a poor day's journey, 

 for, on arriving at a very pretty village (a thing 

 rather unusual to see in Sweden) called Gulsjo, 

 where we had excellent night- quarters at a first- 



