CHAPTER III. 



THE JOURNEY UP. 



The morning of March 24, the day I left 

 Gardsjo, was about as miserable a one as ever I 

 turned out in. The snow lay deep on the ground, 

 and the dark pine-forests looked doubly gloomy 

 in the sickly light of the waning moon. A drizz- 

 ling sleet was falling ; the thermometer was just 

 17° below zero, Celsius (1|° Fahr.), and the pros- 

 pect of a journey of about a thousand English 

 miles in open sledges, in such weather, looked 

 cheerless enough. However, the horses were put 

 to, and about five we got under weigh, and reached 

 Philipstad, a little town sixty miles distant, by 

 midnight. This was our first stage, and the jour- 

 ney passed without a single incident on the road 

 worth recording, save that, for the last Swedish 

 mile into that town, the road was quite bare, for 

 the snow was so cut up with the sledges which 

 transport the iron ore from the mines in this 

 neighbourhood, that we had to change our sledges 

 for carts, the only time throughout our whole 

 journey. The cold was intense throughout the 



