"If such an apology for a garden were to come trailing into Sörmland, the province of gardens, wouldn't it think itself a poor wilderness by comparison?"
Imagine an immense plain like the one now gliding beneath him, coming under the very eyes of the poor Småland peasants! They would hurry away from their meagre garden plots and stony fields, to begin plowing and sowing.
There was one thing, however, of which this Northland had more than other lands, and that was light. Night must have set in, for the cranes stood sleeping on the morass; but it was as light as day. The sun had not travelled southward, like every other thing. Instead, it had gone so far north that it shone in the boy's face. To all appearance, it had no notion of setting that night.
If this light and this sun were only shining on West Vemmenhög! It would suit the boy's father and mother to a dot to have a working day that lasted twenty-four hours.
Sunday, June nineteenth.
The boy raised his head and looked around, perfectly bewildered. It was mighty queer! Here he lay sleeping in some place where he had not been before. No, he had never seen this glen nor the mountains round about; and never had he noticed such puny and shrunken birches as those under which he now lay.
Where was the eagle? The boy could see no sign of him. Gorgo must have deserted him. Well, here was another adventure!
The boy lay down again, closed his eyes, and tried to recall the circumstances under which he had dropped to sleep.
He remembered that as long as he was travelling over Westbottom he had fancied that the eagle and he were at a standstill in the air, and that the land under them was moving southward. As the eagle turned northwest, the wind had come from that side, and again he had felt a current of air, so that the land below had stopped moving and he had noticed that the eagle was bearing him onward with terrific speed.
"Now we are flying into Lapland," Gorgo had said, and the boy had bent forward, so that he might see the country of which he had heard so much.