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things they meet with, and carry them away by their violence into far distant
places, where they are never seen or heard of afterwards. Their only help against
these is to convey themselves into dens and caves. Here is rain as in other places,
sometimes more, and sometimes less, but in the midst of Summer, this as
likewise the neighbouring Countries have very seldom any at all. Snow they
have more often, and so much that in the Winter it covers all the Country, of
which they make this advantage, that they can travel the more securely in the
night; for the light of the Moon reflected from the snow, enlightens all the
fields, that they can discern and avoid any pits, precipices and wild Beasts,
that would otherwise annoy them: so convenient are the wayes for any journy,
that two rein deer will draw a greater load over the trodden snow, then a Cart
and ten Horses can in the fields at other times. These snows in some places, as
on the tops of their highest hills, remain perpetually, and are never melted by
the strongest heat of the Sun. In the upper part of Lapland there are Mountains
rising to such a vast hight, that the snow continues upon them Summer and
Winter, and is never dissolved, but in other places the Land is every year
overflown with floods of melted snow. They have also very great frosts and mists,
and good store of them, which sometimes so thicktn the air, that the sight is
quite obstructed, and Passengers cann’t distinguish one man from another to
salute or avoid him, tho he be come close up to them. It is so extreme cold here
in the Winter, that ’tis not to be endured but by those who have bin bred up
in it. The swiftest Rivers are sometimes frozen so hard, that the ice is more than
three or four cubits thick; and their greatest Lakes and deepest Seas bear any
burdens whatever. Nor is the Summer, which to some may seem incredible,
more moderately hot. For tho the Sun be very low, and his raies oblique, yet
lying upon them so long together, their force is strangely increast; the only allay
being from the vapors rising out of the neighbouring Sea, and from the snows,
which as well in Summer as Winter co tinue undissolv’d in hollow places between
the hills. As for Spring and Autumn they know neither, there being so very
little space between the extremity of cold in the Winter, and heat in Summer,
that by Strangers ’tis look’t upon as a miracle to see every thing springing fresh
and green, when but a week before all things were overwhelm’d with frost and
snow. Ol. Petr. Nieuren. has observed it as a memorable thing, and which he
would not have believ’d from any one had he not seen it himself, that in the year
1616, June 24, going to the Church of Thor, he saw the trees budding, and the
grass coming up green out of the ground, and within a fortnight after he saw the
Plants full blown, and the leaves of the trees at their perfection, as if they had
known how short the Summer was to be, and therefore made such hast to enjoy it.
Their Soil is generally neither very fertile nor barren, but between both, full of
flints, stones and rocks, every where appearing high, by whose unevenness and
roughness the rest of the ground about is useless. The ground is generally very
soft and slabby, by reason of the many Lakes and Rivers overflowing, yet would
it be fit either for tillage or pasture if any would be at the pains and charge of
draining it. Ol. Petrus saies of the Southern part, lying under the same climate
and influence of the Heavens with Bothnia, that ’tis as apt to bear any grain as
the Western Bothnia it self, but this is not without a concurrence and aptitude
likewise of the soil: and he himself confesses in Chap. 12th, that the Land is stony,
sandy, uneven, overrun in some places with briars and thornes, and in others
nothing but hills, moores, fennes and standing waters, which are not the
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