The extensive pine forests here grow to no use. As nobody wants timber, the trees fall and rot upon the ground. I suggested the advantage of extracting pitch and tar from them, but was answered by the judge of the district that, from the remoteness of the situation, what could be obtained from them would not pay for the trouble. But as no place in the whole Swedish territories can afford so much, and it might easily in winter be conveyed twenty miles, surely it deserves attention. In a grassy spot near the river I found a rare species of _Ranunculus_, with a three-leaved calyx and a little yellow upright flower, which appears to be nondescript. I met with it but twice or thrice in this neighbourhood and no where else. (This is _R. lapponicus Fl. Lapp. n. 231. t. 3. f. 4._) In the marshes I remarked that what I had previously found on the hills, and taken for a kind of white _Byssus_, had here possessed itself of the tops of the Bog-moss (_Sphagnum_), and bore flesh-coloured shields, so that an inexperienced observer might easily be so far deceived by it as to think those shields the fructification of the _Sphagnum_. (_Lichen ericetorum._ See _Fl. Lapp. n. 455._) It is remarkable that the Juniper here always grows in watery places. The berries are scantily produced, nor are the people of the country at all acquainted with the method of making a spiritous liquor from them, as in other places. I showed them how to make a kind of brandy of the young tops of the fir, as a little improvement upon their usual watery beverage[35], but they thought the scheme impracticable; nor could they conceive it possible to obtain any thing drinkable from the sap of the birch. They seemed determined to keep entirely to water. [35] Linnæus's words are "to wash down the water." I could not observe that the nights were at all less light than the days, except when the sun was clouded. The poor Laplanders find the church festivals, or days of public thanksgiving, in the spring of the year, very burthensome and oppressive, as they are in general obliged to pass the river at the hazard of their lives. The water at that season is neither sufficiently frozen to bear them, nor open enough to be navigated; so they are under the necessity of wading frequently up to their arms, and are half dead with cold and fatigue by the time they get to church. They must either undergo this hardship, or be fined ten silver dollars and do penance for three Sundays; which surely is too severe[36]. [36] This is no new instance of contrariety between the tyranny of man and the gospel of Christ, whose "yoke is easy and his burthen light." If these innocent people were to complain of it to their spiritual guides, they might be told, as on another occasion, see _p. 130_, that "it was a trifle not worth thinking about." We cannot here say with Pope, "The devil and the king divide the prize,"