The water of the lake of _Virijaur_ (perhaps _Wire-jaur_) was of a whitish green colour, exactly like water poured into a vessel previously used for milk. This appearance arose merely from its extreme purity, levity, and consequent transparency. It was cooler than the water flowing from the snow.
Not far from this lake, on the left, upon the side of the mountain called _Kaitsoniunni_, near a rivulet, I picked up a curious stone or radiated _fluor_, of a blueish colour, composed of square parts (probably zeolite). In the evening it rained, but I observed the _Papilionoides_ with purple spots (_Sphinx Filipendulæ_).
The stones hereabouts were mostly fissile, horny; some black and aluminous, but generally horny and spontaneously decomposing, with silvery talc, rarely any quartz.
We rose early this morning, and after walking a quarter of a mile arrived at the lofty icy mountain. This is indeed of a very great elevation, and covered with perpetual snow, the surface of which was, for the most part, frozen quite hard. Sometimes we walked firmly over it, but it occasionally gave way, crumbling under our feet like sand. Every now and then we came to a river taking its course under the snowy crust, which in some parts had yielded to the force of the currents, and the sides of each chasm exhibited many snowy strata one above another. Here the mountain streams began to take their course westward, a sign of our having reached Norwegian Lapland. The delightful tracts of vegetation, which had hitherto been so agreeably interspersed among the alpine snows, were now no longer to be seen. No charming flowers were here scattered under our feet. The whole country was one dazzling snowy waste. The cold east wind quickened our steps, and obliged us to protect our hands that we might escape chilblains. I was glad to put on an additional coat. As we proceeded across the north side of this mountain, we were often so violently driven along by the force of the wind, that we were taken off our feet, and rolled a considerable way down the hill. This once happened to me in so dangerous a place, that, after rolling to the distance of a gun-shot, I arrived near the brink of a precipice, and thus my part in the drama had very nearly come to an end. The rain, which fell in torrents on all sides, froze on our shoes and backs into a crust of ice. This journey would have been long and tiresome enough without any such additional inconvenience. At length, after having travelled betwixt three and four miles, the mountains appeared before us, bare of snow though only sterile rocks, and between them we caught a view of the western ocean. The only bird I had seen in this icy tract, was what the Laplanders call _Pago_ (_Charadrius Hiaticula_). Its breast is black, throat white, feet orange.