NOTES FEOM DIARY KEPT AT QTJ1CKIOCK. 137 



a fine yarn out of a trifling thread, I can only 

 assure him that I have faithfully described what 

 I felt; and if he fancies I have exaggerated in 

 the least, I only hope that it may be his luck, just 

 for once, to be out himself on such a night, and he 

 will then see how he likes it. 



Since that night I have had a deal of con- 

 versation on the subject with many of our fell men 

 and foresters, and all agreed that I could have 

 scarcely been bushed in a worse night. In gene- 

 ral, when the snow is falling, the wind is still and 

 the air dull and warm ; but on this night the cold, 

 piercing wind turned the soft snow-flakes into 

 sleet, and the thermometer was many degrees below 

 zero. So heavy a snowstorm has not been known 

 in Wermland for twenty years. In the last such 

 storm it was computed that 105 lives were lost in 

 the north. They all agreed that I was perfectly 

 right in keeping going ; and said that if I had once 

 sunk exhausted in the snow, I should never have 

 risen again. On the Lapland fells, where it is not 

 unusual to be lost in a snow-drift, the plan they 

 adopt is this : They push on for awhile, and when 

 they find their track is fairly lost, and they must 

 be snowed-in, they scrape a deep hole in the snow, 

 lay their " skiddors," or long snow-skates, across 

 the top of the hole, which prevents the falling 

 snow quite blocking them in, and leaves a little 



