PREFACE.
I OUGHT to apologise for venturing to lay before the public the
fruits of a journey performed with such rapidity, and occupying so
short a space of time as my tour through Sweden. My whole stay in
that kingdom did not exceed six or seven weeks; and, as during that
time, I traversed an extent of more than 1200 miles, it is obvious
that my journey must have been made with too much rapidity to enable
me to lay in any great stock o f accurate information. But notwithstanding
the rapidity of my journey, I found, upon comparing
my journal with all the English hooks of travels through Sweden
which I could find, that I had it in my power to lay much new infor:
mation before the English reader. The mineralogy o f Sweden had
not been touched upon, except by one or two German travellers; and
as I saw a good deal more o f the country than either Haussman or
Yon Buch, many o f my mineralogical observations will, I flatter myself,
be found new. To the English reader they ought to be interesting,
because they exhibit a country exceedingly different from his own,
and almost entirely composed of a rock which is rather o f rare occurrence
in Great Britain; being, as far as my observations have gone,
confined to a few districts in the Highlands o f Scotland. The prodigious
extent of gneiss rocks which cover almost the whole o f Scan