37 
JOURNEY TO LAPLAND. 
“ tracks. For regular highways and roads are not to be found in 
u those wild regions. The least cloud or fog can mislead the travel- 
u ler: and if he loses his only right track, for there is seldom 
K more than one, he may surely give himself up as lost. In all this 
w he is deprived of every commodity, and must go without bread 
cc 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- 
u rage, being the purest and finest in the world. But the nights are very 
« unpleasant. The coldness and roughness of the boards, which supply 
4< 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 ; 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, 
a all this has a something moving, splendid and majestic. One remem- 
« bers it with pleasure, and feels, by some secret magic, a desire ol re- 
« turning and renovating such lively and pleasant ideas by fiesh contem- 
« plation. Every other journey of a similar extent is but uniform, if 
a compared with the present. 
All the hardships enumerated in this description, cold and immoderate 
heat, hunger, want of commodities, and numberless dangers attending 
the 
