there cut her to pieces. Upon this they fed twenty days; and afterwards they killed several other bears, one of them six feet high; and having now plenty of food, and eating heartily two or three meals a day, they soon found their strength increase.

Towards the middle of March the days were considerably lengthened; and the fowls, which on the approach of winter fled to the southward, began to resort to Greenland again in great numbers. The foxes also, which had kept close in their holes all winter, now appeared abroad; of which our countrymen took no less than fifty, and found them to be very good food when roasted.

In May the weather beginning to grow warm, and the season for the arrival of the ships coming on, some of them went almost every day to the top of a mountain, to see if they could discern a sail; but on the 25th of that month, none of them happening to go abroad, one of them in the outward booth heard somebody hail the tent, which proved to be one of the boat's crew belonging to a ship just come from England. Of this the man had no sooner informed his companions, than they all ran out to meet their countrymen, by whom they were kindly treated; and upon their return to England, they received a handsome gratuity, and were well provided for by the generosity of the merchants.

CHAP. X.

OF SWEDEN AND LAPLAND.

Lakes, Springs, Cataracts, Climate, Phenomena, &c.

THE kingdom of Sweden is one of the largest

in Europe, and in some places the soil is tolerably fruitful; but the great number of barren mountains dispersed over the face of the country give it a disagreeable aspect. From the mountains fall innumerable rivers, or rather torrents, many of which are rendered unnavigable by the rocks and cataracts that obstruct their passage; and these form several great lakes, some of which are eighty English miles in length and twent in breadth. If therefore we make an allowance for the mountains, lakes, woods, heaths, and marshes, with which the country abounds, the habitable part of it will be reduced to a small proportion compared to the extent of the whole.

Amongst the lakes of Sweden, that called Vetter is so remarkable in many respects, that it deserves peculiar attention. It divides East and West Gothland, being in length, from north to south, above eighty miles, and about eighteen broad in the middle, growing narrower towards each extremity. The water of this lake is very clear, and in some places so deep, that it has been sounded with three hundred fathoms of line without finding the bottom. For the most part it is free from rocks, and has but few islands, the principal of which is Visingsoe, lying in the mid

dle of the lake. It is often disturbed by storms, and sometimes so suddenly, that the surface begins to be ruffled before the least breath of wind is perceived, so that the cause seems to proceed from the bottom of the waters; and it is no uncommon thing for boats to be tossed by a storm in one part of the lake, whilst others at a small distance enjoy a perfect calm. That such eruptions and agitations of the water are promoted by subterraneous winds, seems to be confirmed by various phenomena; for immediately before a storm, and whilst the sky is yet clear, there is perceived a noise like thunder in the lake, which is always followed by a tempest. Of this the inhabitants of Visingsoe are more sensible than any others; for from that part of the island whence the wind will blow the next day, they hear a confused noise like the firing of cannon; and when this rumbling is heard in the east, it is generally followed by rain and hail. Some people have likewise observed, while the water has been very calm, a great number of little clouds, like so many darts, rising up from the bottom of the lake, which, uniting in the air, form a kind of mizzling rain whence it plainly appears, that this is, in a great measure, owing to subterraneous winds. To such winds also, together with those from above, we may attribute the sudden thawing of the ice in the spring, which one minute is strong enough to bear horses and sledges, and the next is broken to pieces. The strange noise of the waters, which precedes this terrible eruption, warns travellers to make the best of their way; but those who happen to be at a great distance from land are immediately drowned, or float upon shoals of ice till they meet with relief: and what is still more

;

dangerous, the least blast of wind will sometimes sink the ice suddenly to the bottom.

The violent under-currents of water observed in this lake are also very surprising, which, directly opposing the winds and waves, give the fisherman a great deal of trouble. From these, as well as from its unfathomable depth and subterraneous winds, it is supposed to have a communication under ground with another large lake called Venner, about forty miles to the westward; and this seems to be confirmed by several whirlpools that lie between these lakes, two of which have been sounded, and found of a vast depth. What farther countenances this opinion is, that some years, without any visible cause, the waters increase, and decrease again the following years, as several persons have observed,

In the vicinity of this lake is a spring called the Hungry or Prophetic Fountain, because the peasants assert that it never has plenty of water but when there is a scarcity of corn the following year. It lies in a valley encompassed with sandy hills, and has this peculiarity, that in a rainy season it is commonly dry, whereas in the driest summers it sometimes overflows the highway near Vadstein. In 1685, which was a very wet year, this spring was quite dried up; but the next summer, which was not so rainy, it was observed to increase: and in the remarkably dry summer of 1705, when all the neighbouring springs entirely failed, this had a plentiful stream of water.

Cataracts, as we have already observed, are. frequent in the rivers of Sweden; but the most noted of all, and the only one worth giving an account of, is that within a few leagues of Gottenburg; where a river, which issues from the

lake Venner, falls down a prodigious high precipice into a deep pit, with a terrible noise, and with such violence, that large masts, which are floated down the river to Gottenburgh, frequently dive so far under water by the fall, if they happen to pitch endways, that some are half an hour, others three quarters, and some a whole hour before they rise up again to the surface Many attempts have been made to find the depth of this hole, with lines of several hundred fathoms; but no bottom could ever be discovered.

With respect to Lapland, which lies to the north of Sweden, it seems in winter, upon a superficial view, scarcely fit to be the habitation of man; for in most places it abounds with rocks and mountains, whose summits seem to pierce the clouds, and are covered with everlasting. snow. In other parts, the country spreads out into barren heaths, and sandy deserts overrun with moss, fern, and unprofitable weeds; one barren wild stretching beyond another, with little or no pasture growing on the intermediate spots. Besides these inconveniences, the length and severity of winter, with the cold hideous winter nights, and the depth of snow that covers this desolate region, one would imagine sufficient to deter every human being from fixing his abode: in this inhospitable country. The account given by M. Maupertuis, of the rigor of this climate, when, by order of the French king, he went to determine the figure of the earth at the polar circle, is enough to make any man shudder, though his observations were made in the southern borders of the country. He observes, that in December, the snow continually falling or ready to fall, obscured the sun even during the few moments