e only man I met before undertaking the
journey, who encouraged me to push on. "The people in Stockholm," said
he, "know nothing about Northern Sweden." He advised me to give up
travelling by _forbud_, to purchase a couple of sleds, and take our
chance of finding horses: we would have no trouble in making from forty
to fifty English miles per day. On returning to the inn, I made the
landlord understand what we wanted, but could not understand him in
return. At this juncture came in a handsome fellow; with a cosmopolitan
air, whom Braisted recognised, by certain invisible signs, as the mate
of a ship, and who explained the matter in very good English. I
purchased two plain but light and strongly made sleds for 50 _rigs_
(about $14), which seemed very cheap, but I afterwards learned that I
paid much more than the current price.

On repacking our effects, we found that everything liquid was
frozen--even a camphorated mixture, which had been carefully wrapped in
flannel. The cold, therefore, must have been much more severe than we
supposed. Our supplies, also, were considerably damaged--the lantern
broken, a powder-flask cracked, and the salt, shot, nails, wadding, &c.,
mixed together in beautiful confusion. Everything was stowed in one of
the sleds, which was driven by the postilion; the other contained only
our two selves. We were off the next morning, as the first streaks of
dawn appeared in the sky. The roads about Sundsvall were very much cut
up, and even before getting out of the town we were pitched over head
and ears into a snow-bank.

We climbed slowly up and darted headlong down the ridges which descend
from the west toward the Bothnian Gulf, dividing its tributary rivers;
and toward sunrise, came to a broad bay, completely frozen over and
turned into a snowy plain. With some difficulty the _skjutsbonde_ made
me understand that a shorter road led across the ice to the second
post-station, Fjal, avoiding one change of horses. The way was rough
enough at first, over heaped blocks of ice, but became smoother where
the wind had full sweep, and had cleared the water before it froze. Our
road was marked out by a double row of young fir-trees, planted in the
ice. The bay was completely land-locked, embraced by a bold sweep of
wooded hills, with rich, populous valleys between. Before us, three or
four miles across, lay the little port of Wifsta-warf, where several
vessels--among them a ship of three or four hundred tuns-