July 3.
Early this morning I went with Mr. Joachim Koch, quarter-master of the regiment stationed here, and Mr. Segar Swanberg, master of the mines, to the Kiuriwari, a high mountain half a mile from Kiomitis, where a silver mine had just been opened. The ore showed itself only in one cleft, whose sides it seemed to cement together.
All over this mountain I observed a kind of Uva Ursi with black fruit, which I do not know that any author has described.
The flower was exactly like that of the Mealy-berry (Arbutus Uva-ursi); each stood on a simple stalk, and had five teeth at its orifice. The fruit was of five cells, globose, enclosed in the petal. (Arbutus alpina.)
I likewise found here a Catch-fly with ten stamens and five styles (Lychnis alpina), exactly similar to the common Catch-fly (Lychnis Viscaria), except that the flowers were smaller and not so much scattered, neither was the stem at all viscid.
Birch trees were to be found even on the highest part of this hill, but of a very diminutive stature. Their trunks were thick but low, and their highest shoots seemed to have been killed by frost, so that the young leaves looked as if they were growing out of branches that had been burnt. I was told that these trees afford every year but a very small portion of sap, and that the wood is much harder than the common kind. Such diminutive trees grow to a
great age. The further I proceeded up the country, the smaller I still found them.
Some of the people hereabouts clean their half-boots and harness with the fat of fish; others purchase blacking from Norway.
July 4.
I met with an Andromeda with leaves like Empetrum (A. cærulea). The stem and foliage were exactly like that plant, but somewhat larger. The calyx rough, short, with five teeth. Corolla of one petal, blue, ovate, with five spreading notched segments at its orifice. Stamens ten, very short, with horned anthers. Pistil one, the length of the corolla, with a blunt pentagonal stigma.