36 
JOURNEY TO LAPLAND. 
have not the latter, in preference to the inhospitable and desert trafts 
of Lapland! The description given by Baron Haller of his Alpine 
torn, 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 Linnaeus; 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 
“ P lants 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 ful1 enjoyment of every domestic comfort; their labour 
44 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- 
44 tains the most piercing frost, which almost chills the blood, and re- 
44 turn afterwards to the vallies, where he is almost suffocated with heat. 
In all these excursions one is exposed to a constant intemperature of 
54 the climate. For the clouds, which generally rest on the Alps , 
44 emit almost every day, hail or thunder; or the brows of those hugl 
44 mountains are covered with thick fogs, which prove still more 
dangerous, because they conceal the paths, or rather the slightest 
* Baron Haller’s Biblotheque Raisonnee, tom. ix, p. 166 . 
44 tracks. 
