JOURNEY TO LAPLAND. 37 



*< tracks. For regular highways and roads are not to be found in 

 *' those wild regions. The least cloud or fog can mislead the travel- 

 " ler : and if he loses his only right track, for there is seldom 

 " more than one, he may surely give himself up as lost. In all this 

 " he is deprived of every commodity, and must go without bread 

 " or bed. The night is spent in huts. The inhabitants are, indeed, as 

 " hospitable as the Greeks of yore ; they share with ftrangers their 



usual food — nay, even their dainties. But what dainties ! — Milk, and 

 " sometimes curds. For those who drink water it is an excellent beve- 

 " rage, being the purest and finest in the world. But the nights are very 

 " unpleasant. The coldness and roughness of the boards, which supply 

 " the place of beds, render them almost insupportable. Notwithstanding 



such hardships, there have always been persons who wished to face 

 « them. Those mountains, covered with perpetual ice, those rocky py- 

 " ramids, covered with everlasting snow ; those awful, obscure valleys, 

 " from which pour down a great number of torrents among a thousand 

 " cascades j those natural fountains and reservoirs, which surpass by far, 



every thing which the most powerful monarch could procure ; those 



deserts, whose calmness and solitude is not even interrupted by the song 

 ** of birds, those numerous flocks, the image of innocence. In short, 

 « all this has a something moving, splendid and majestic. One remem- 

 « hers it with pleasure, and feels, by some secret magic, a desire of re- 

 *« turning and renovating such lively and pleasant ideas by fresh contera- 

 " plation. Every other journey of a similar extent is but uniform, if 

 « compared with the present." 



All the hardships enumerated in this description, cold and immoderate 

 heat, hunger, want of commodities, and numberless dangers attending 



the 



