, dazzling, and glorious. Italian
dawns and twilights cannot surpass those we saw every day, not, like the
former, fading rapidly into the ashen hues of dusk, but lingering for
hour after hour with scarce a decrease of splendour. Strange that Nature
should repeat these lovely aerial effects in such widely different
zones and seasons. I thought to find in the winter landscapes of the far
North a sublimity of death and desolation--a wild, dark, dreary,
monotony of expression--but I had, in reality, the constant enjoyment of
the rarest, the tenderest, the most enchanting beauty.

The people one meets along the road harmonise with these unexpected
impressions. They are clear eyed and rosy as the morning, straight and
strong as the fir saplings in their forests, and simple, honest, and
unsophisticated beyond any class of men I have ever seen. They are no
milksops either. Under the serenity of those blue eyes and smooth, fair
faces, burns the old Berserker rage, not easily kindled, but terrible as
the lightning when once loosed. "I would like to take all the young men
north of Sundsvall," says Braisted, "put them into Kansas, tell them her
history, and then let them act for themselves." "The cold in clime are
cold in blood," sings Byron, but they are only cold through superior
self-control and freedom from perverted passions. Better is the
assertion of Tennyson:

"That bright, and fierce, and fickle is the South,
And dark, and true, and tender is the North."

There are tender hearts in the breasts of these northern men and women,
albeit they are as undemonstrative as the English--or we Americans, for
that matter. It is exhilarating to see such people--whose digestion is
sound, whose nerves are tough as whipcord, whose blood runs in a strong
full stream, whose impulses are perfectly natural, who are good without
knowing it, and who are happy without trying to be so. Where shall we
find such among our restless communities at home?

We made two Swedish miles by noon, and then took a breakfast of fried
reindeer meat and pancakes, of which we ate enormously, to keep up a
good supply of fuel. Braisted and I consumed about a pound of butter
between us. Shriek not, young ladies, at our vulgar appetites--you who
sip a spoonful of ice-cream, or trifle with a diminutive _meringue_, in
company, but make amends on cold ham and pickles in the pantry, after
you go home--I shall tell the truth, though it disgust you. This intens