REIKEVIG. 
29 
thick curd, may also be reckoned a common 
article of food: this they prefer after it has ac¬ 
quired a sour, and even a rancid taste; though, 
when fresh, or when it has attained only a slight 
degree of acidity, and is eaten with cream and 
sugar, it is really an enviable article of luxury. 
The country immediately about Reikevig, and, 
indeed, for twenty or thirty miles from it, is 
ugly, barren, and scarcely to be called hilly. An 
extensive fresh-water lake comes close up to 
the back part of the town, but is on every other 
side, except that nearest the town, surrounded by 
bog, with here and there a piece of rock inter¬ 
spersed. Not a tree or shrub is anywhere to be 
seen, and all attempts that have been made in 
the most sheltered parts of the town to cultivate 
firs and other hardy trees - , have universally failed, 
as have those which have been made for the cul¬ 
tivation of corn. This lake empties itself into 
the sea by a small stream which runs by the 
side of the town, in a course of not more than 
a few hundred yards. On the eastern side of the 
lake, on a gentle elevation, where a tolerably rich 
herbage is produced, a prodigious number of great 
pieces of rock are scattered about, in the utmost 
disorder; some of them are of vast size, three or 
four times the height of a man, and about as 
wide as they are high; yet there is no mountain 
