330 



THE FIR TRIBE. 



fire on both sides of us, though, as it happened, 

 we were never exposed to any danger, or to serious 

 inconvenience, in consequence of these confla- 

 grations. The tree in the foreground had caught 

 fire near the ground, and having, I do not know 

 how, been hollowed out in its centre, the flames 

 had crept up and burst out some feet higher, so 

 that they were roaring like a blast-furnace, and 

 rapidly demolishing the tree at the bottom, while 

 the branches at the top were waving about in full 

 verdure, as if nothing unusual was going on 

 below."* 



Linnaeus well describes the danger by which 

 he was surrounded when traversing one of these 

 burning forests in Lapland. Several days ago 

 the forests had been set on fire by lightning, and 

 the flames raged at this time with great violence, 

 owing to the drought of the season. In many 

 different places, perhaps nine or ten that came 

 under my notice, the devastation extended se- 

 veral miles' distance. I traversed a space of three 

 quarters of a mile in extent (about four miles 

 and a half Enghsh), which was entirely burnt, 

 so that. Flora, instead of appearing in her gay 

 and verdant attire, was in deep sable, — a spectacle 

 more abhorrent to my feelings than to see her 

 clad in the white hvery of vdnter ; for this, 

 though it destroys the herbage, leaves the roots 

 in safety, which the fire does not. The fire was 

 nearly extinguished in most of the spots we 

 visited, except in ant-hills and dry trunks of 

 trees. After we had travelled about half a quar- 

 ter of a mile across one of these scenes of desola- 

 tion, the wind began to blow with rather more 



* Hall's " Sketches in Canada." 



