The result of his botanical observations was not published for several years afterwards, during his residence in Holland. This expedition was the first and most difficult of all the six journeys of Linnæus. He spoke of it afterwards in one of his academical addresses in these words: “My journey through Lapland was particularly toilsome, and I own that I was obliged to sustain more hardships and dangers in that sole peregrination through the frontier of our northern world, than in all the other travels I undertook in other parts. But having once sustained the toils of travelling, I buried in the oblivion of Lethe all the dangers and difficulties I endured, the invaluable fruits I reaped having compensated for every toil.” Writing to a friend on the same subject, he says: “All my food in these fatiguing excursions consisted, for the most part, of fish and reindeer’s milk. Bread, salt, and what is found everywhere else, did but seldom recreate my palate. One of the greatest nuisances which I met with in Lapland was the immense number of flies. I used to keep them off, by drawing a crape over my face.” The youthful traveller started on his adventurous journey “without encumbrances of any kind, and carried all his baggage on his back,” by which means alone he was enabled to prosecute the objects he had in view. Leaving Upsala by the northern gate, he travelled for a considerable distance through fertile corn-fields, bounded by hills, and the view terminated by extensive forests. With respect to situation and variety of prospects, the young Swede was of opinion that scarcely any city could stand a comparison with this. At a short distance from the gates he left, on the right, Old Upsala, the place renowned for the worship of the primeval gods of Sweden, and for the inauguration and residence of her earliest king. Here, in days of high antiquity, human sacrifices were offered at the shrines of the pagan deities, and here our traveller noticed the three large sepulchral mounds which tradition has assigned to the bodies of Odin, Frigga, and Thor. “Cheered with the song of the charming lark,” which attended his steps through the lowland, his approach to the forest was welcomed by the redwing, “whose amorous warblings from the tops of the spruce firs” appeared to him to rival the nightingale itself. As the summer was advancing, he thought it not desirable to lose time by the way, nor to stray far from the high road in the early part of the tour; but attentively observing what presented itself to him as he passed along, he noted the various plants, animals, and insects, together with the general features of the country.