d biting as it blew across the hollows and open plains. I did not
cover my face, but kept up such a lively friction on my nose, to prevent
it from freezing, that in the evening I found the skin quite worn away.

At Daglosten, the third station, we stopped an hour for breakfast. It
was a poverty-stricken place, and we could only get some fish-roes and
salt meat. The people were all half-idiots, even to the postilion who
drove us. We had some daylight for the fourth station, did the fifth by
twilight, and the sixth in darkness. The cold (-30 deg.) was so keen that
our postilions made good time, and we reached Sunnana on the Skelleftea
River, 52 miles, soon after six o'clock. Here we were lodged in a large,
barn-like room, so cold that we were obliged to put on our overcoats and
sit against the stove. I began to be troubled with a pain in my jaw,
from an unsound tooth--the commencement of a martyrdom from which I
suffered for many days afterwards. The existence of nerves in one's
teeth has always seemed to me a superfluous provision of Nature, and I
should have been well satisfied if she had omitted them in my case.

The handmaiden called us soon after five o'clock, and brought us coffee
while we were still in bed. This is the general custom here in the
North, and is another point of contact with the South. The sky was
overcast, with raw violent wind--mercury 18 deg. below zero. We felt the
cold very keenly; much more so than on Christmas day. The wind blew full
in our teeth, and penetrated even beneath our furs. On setting out, we
crossed the Skelleftea River by a wooden bridge, beyond which we saw,
rising duskily in the uncertain twilight, a beautiful dome and lantern,
crowning a white temple, built in the form of a Greek cross. It was the
parish church of Skelleftea. Who could have expected to find such an
edifice, here, on the borders of Lapland? The village about it contains
many large and handsome houses. This is one of the principal points of
trade and intercourse between the coast and the interior.

The weather became worse as we advanced, traversing the low, broad
hills, through wastes of dark pine forests. The wind cut like a sharp
sword in passing the hollows, and the drifting snow began to fill the
tracks. We were full two hours in making the ten miles to Frostkage, and
the day seemed scarcely nearer at hand. The leaden, lowering sky gave
out no light, the forests were black and cold, the snow a dusky
grey--su