S6 JOURNEY TO LAPLAND. 



have not the latter, in preference to the inhospitable and desert tra6ls 

 of Lapland! The description given by Baron Haller of his Alpine 

 tour, and of the hardships -which the botanist must encounter in 

 Switzerland, is the .only apt comparison which can be drawn with 

 the Lapponian journey of Linn/Eus; a description, that in most in- 

 stances can be applied to the latter, except in the narrative of hard- 

 ships, which the reader must fancy to have been greater and more 

 complicated in Lapland. 



" Among all the botanists," says Haller, the botanist of 

 «' Switzerland finds the greatest difficulties. That country exhibits an 

 " infinite variety ; and the excursions made there cannot be deemed 

 "pleasure-walks. M. Vaillant, who composed the catalogue of 

 " plants in the environs of Paris, and a great many other botanists who 

 " have written similar works, only found pleasure. They visited fine dis- 

 " trifts, villas, parks, pleasant woods, and returned from their excur- 

 " sions in the full enjoyment of every domestic comfort; their labour 

 «< was mere recreation. But it is quite another case in Switzerland, 

 « The traveller must climb up the Alps through dreadful cliffs, descend 

 *« from these with still greater danger, suffer on the summit of the moun- 



tains the most piercing frost, which almost chills the blood, and re- 

 s' turn afterwards to the vallies, where he is almost suffocated with heat. 

 " In all these excursions one is exposed to a constant intemperature of 

 " the climate. For the clouds, which generally rest on the Alps^ 

 «« emit almost every day, hail or thunder ; or the brows of those huge 

 « mountains are covered with thick fogs, which prove still more 



dangerous, because they conceal the paths, or rather the slightest 



♦ Baron Hallir's Biblotheque Raisonnee, torn, ix, p, 266. 



" tracks. 



