26th. I departed from Umeå in rainy weather that lasted all day, and I turned off west from the high road aiming for Lycksele Lappmark. I now lost the convenience I had had earlier of being able to requisition horses at the posthouses – a system that has to be reckoned as no small advantage to the travelling stranger here in Sweden. I was compelled to coax and beg for horses. The road became more and more horrible and I rode in mortal danger on a horse that stumbled over stones at every second step. I was travelling along by-ways where the devil himself could not have located me. I began to wish that I had a companion or, at least, had been on an ordinary highway, where the horse would have been welcome to bounce the heart out of my body. The people spoke a distinctly broken dialect and always dropped something off the adjective with which they ended their speech.