beds in a small room with another man in it, and
went to sleep without supper. I was so thoroughly worn out that I got
about three hours' rest, in spite of my pain.

We took coffee in bed at seven, and started for Ranbyn, on the Ranea
River. The day was lowering, temperature 8-1/2 deg. below zero. The country
was low, slightly undulating with occasional wide views to the north,
over the inlets of the gulf, and vast wide tracts of forest. The
settlements were still as frequent as ever, but there was little
apparent cultivation, except flax. Ranbyn is a large village, with a
stately church. The people were putting up booths for a fair (a fair in
the open air, in lat. 65 deg. N., with the mercury freezing!), which
explained the increased travel on the road. We kept on to Hvita for
breakfast, thus getting north of the latitude of Tornea; thence our road
turned eastward at right angles around the head of the Bothnian Gulf.
Much snow had fallen, but the road had been ploughed, and we had a
tolerable track, except when passing sleds, which sometimes gave us an
overturn.

We now had uninterrupted forest scenery between the stations--and such
scenery! It is almost impossible to paint the glory of those winter
forests. Every tree, laden with the purest snow, resembles a Gothic
fountain of bronze, covered with frozen spray, through which only
suggestive glimpses of its delicate tracery can be obtained. From every
rise we looked over thousands of such mimic fountains, shooting, low or
high, from their pavements of ivory and alabaster. It was an enchanted
wilderness--white, silent, gleaming, and filled with inexhaustible forms
of beauty. To what shall I liken those glimpses under the boughs, into
the depths of the forest, where the snow destroyed all perspective, and
brought the remotest fairy nooks and coverts, too lovely and fragile to
seem cold, into the glittering foreground? "Wonderful! Glorious!" I
could only exclaim, in breathless admiration. Once, by the roadside, we
saw an Arctic ptarmigan, as white as the snow, with ruby eyes that
sparkled like jewels as he moved slowly and silently along, not
frightened in the least.

The sun set a little after one o'clock, and we pushed on to reach the
Kalix River the same evening. At the last station we got a boy postilion
and two lazy horses, and were three hours and a half on the road, with a
temperature of 20 deg. below zero. My feet became like ice, which increased
the pain in m