29. Female of the same, with red fruit.
30. Veronica serpyllifolia, upright, with a blue flower. (V. alpina.)
The lofty mountains, piled one upon another, showed no signs of volcanic fire, but were covered with stones, all of a fissile kind, and by that means easily distinguishable. From the snow, which lay so plentifully on these mountains as to cover half the ground, water was continually running down in streams like so many springs, or like rivers cut through the deep snow, for the refreshment of travellers. We found it very good.
The little alpine variety of the Ptarmigan (Tetrao Lagopus) was now accompanied by its young. I caught one of these, upon which the hen ran so close to me, that I could easily have taken her also. She kept continually jumping round and round me;
but I thought it a pity to deprive the tender brood of their mother, neither would my compassion for the mother allow me long to detain her offspring, which I restored to her in safety.
After having walked four or five miles in the course of the night, I went to sleep in the morning in one of the cottages of the country.
[58] In this and many following instances, the original names in the manuscript are here retained, as a matter of curiosity to the learned botanist, who will be interested in seeing to whom Linnæus extemporaneously dedicated his new genera as they occurred, and who will at the same time admire his sagacity, in determining them, at first sight, so correctly, that not one has subsequently been set aside by any of his severest critics.
July 7.
The inhabitants, sixteen in number, lay there all naked. They washed themselves by rubbing the body downwards, not upwards. They washed their dishes with their fingers, squirting water out of their mouths upon the spoon, and then poured into them boiled reindeer's milk, which was as thick as common milk mixed with eggs, and had a strong flavour. Some thousands of reindeer came home in the morning, which were milked by the men as well as the women, who kneeled down on one knee.
From the top of the head of some of these