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The four principal towns of West and North Bothnia are thus characterised in an old verse of Swedish doggerel: Umeå, the fine; Piteå, the needle-making; Luleå, the lazy; and in Torneå, everybody gets drunk. We took some refreshment, pushed on and reached Abyn between nine and ten o'clock, having travelled seventy miles since morning. The sleighing was superb.
It was over twelve feet in depth; it had been snowing for six consecutive days and nights, and it was snowing yet. I was now between the sixty-third and sixty-fourth degrees of north latitude, and I had to travel on the road nearly two hundred miles more before I came to the southern part of "The Land of the Long Night." The little town of Umeå for which I was bound was still far away.
Sundswall, Umea, Lulea, and Haparanda are the principal places of exportation on the eastern shore, and Gottenburg on the west. The fisheries are also an important branch of industry, and large quantities of stromung and herrings are exported. Salmon abound in the rivers, and the lakes and mountain streams furnish a very fine quality of trout.
I have seen, even beyond Umeå, some fine specimens of cactus, pelargonium, calla, and other exotics. It is singular that, with the universal passion of the Swedes for flowers and for music, they have produced no distinguished painters or composers but, indeed, a Linnæus.
The next morning I was once more on the long and tedious road leading north, towards "The Land of the Long Night." That afternoon I reached the little town of Umeå. The days had become shorter and shorter. The sun was very low at noon and was not above the horizon more than one hour. As I travelled further north I was surprised to notice that the snow diminished rapidly.
At Stocksjö we decided to push on to a station beyond Umeå, called Innertafle, and took our horses accordingly. The direct road, however, was unused on account of the drifts, so we went around through Umeå, after all. We had nearly a Swedish mile, and it was just dark when we descended to the Umeå River, across whose solid surface we drove, and up a steep bank into the town.
A custom-house officer, who took supper with us on board, informed us of the loss of the steam-ship Umeå, which was cut through by the ice near Sundsvall, and sunk, drowning fifteen persons a pleasant prospect for our further voyage and the Pole would have willingly landed at Ystad if he could have found a conveyance to get beyond it.
There is nothing to say about these towns; they are mere villages with less than a thousand inhabitants each, and no peculiar interest, either local or historical, attaching to any of them. We have slept in Luleå, and Piteå, and dined in Umeå, and further my journal saith not. The 5th, however, was a day to be noticed.
As we proceeded southward the forests became larger, and the trees began to show a dark green foliage where the wind had blown away the snow, which was refreshing to see, after the black or dark indigo hue they wear farther north. On the 4th of February, at noon, we passed through Umeå, and congratulated ourselves on getting below the southern limit of the Lapland climate.
We had plentiful meals, consisting mostly of reindeer meat, with a sauce of Swedish cranberries, potatoes, which had been frozen, but were still palatable, salmon roes, soft bread in addition to the black shingles of fladbröd, English porter, and excellent Umeå beer. In fact, in no country inn of the United States could we have been more comfortable.
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