Cultivated fields indeed are rare. The greater part of the country consists of uninhabitable mountainous tracts. In the valleys only are to be seen small dwelling-houses, to each of which adjoins a little field. Even in these there is no great proportion of fertile land, the principal part being marshy.
The people seemed somewhat larger in stature than in other places, especially the
men. I inquired whether the children are kept longer at the breast than is usual with us, and was answered in the affirmative. They are allowed that nourishment more than twice as long as in other places. I have a notion that Adam and Eve were giants, and that mankind from one generation to another, owing to poverty and other causes, have diminished in size. Hence perhaps the diminutive stature of the Laplanders[6].
Brandy is not always to be had here. The people are humane and civilized. Their houses are handsome externally, as well as neat and comfortable within; in which respects they have the advantage of most other places.
The old tradition, that the inhabitants of Helsingland never have the ague, is without foundation. In every parish where I made the inquiry I found many persons who had had that disorder, which appears to be not unfrequent among them.
Here were plenty of Mountain Finches (Fringilla Montifringilla); but, what is remarkable, they were all males, known by the orange-coloured spot on the breast.
[6] The original is very obscure, and I have been obliged partly to guess at the sense of the intermingled Latin and Swedish. I beg leave to suggest that the deficiency of brandy among this sequestered people is perhaps a more probable cause of their robust stature, and even of their neatness and refinement, than that assigned by Linnæus.
May 16.
Between Eksund post-house and Spange is the capital iron forge of Eksund, which has two hammers and one blast furnace. The sons of Vulcan were working in their shirts, and seemed masters of their business. The ore used here is of three or four kinds. First, from Dannemora; second, from Soderom; third, from Grusone, which contains beautiful cubical pyrites; fourth, a black ore from the parish of Arbro, which lies at the bottom of the sea, but in stormy weather is thrown upon the shore. At this place, as well as