ue eyes were uncommon. Men
and women wore strange-looking head-dresses. The men wore square caps of
red or blue flannel, filled up with eider down. The women put on a
wooden framework of very peculiar shape, appearing more or less like a
casque or the helmet of a dragoon.

I only stopped the night in Karasjok, and after getting new reindeer at
the post station and a new guide, started north.

CHAPTER XXI

LEAVE KARASJOK STILL TRAVELLING NORTHWARD.--THE RIVER TANA.--RIVER
LAPPS.--FILTHY DWELLINGS.--ON THE WAY TO NORDKYN.--THE MOST
NORTHERN LAND IN EUROPE.

On leaving Karasjok I travelled northward, over the frozen Karasjoki,
until I came to a broad stream called the Tana. As we drove on the river
I saw here and there solitary farms and strange little hamlets inhabited
by river Lapps.

The occupation of the river Lapps is largely salmon catching in summer.
These fish are very abundant in the rivers. Many, during the codfish
season, engage themselves as sailors on the Arctic Sea. Almost every
family has a small farm, stocked with diminutive cows; besides they have
sheep and goats. During the summer their reindeer are taken care of by
the nomadic Lapps. These reindeer have to go to the mountains near the
Arctic Sea, on account of the mosquitoes.

Now travelling was becoming very hard,--not on account of the snow, but
because the inhabitants and their dwellings were so dirty.

But I had one comfort. All over that far northern land I felt so safe;
it never came into my head that these people would rob me, though they
knew I had plenty of money with me, according to their ways of
thinking, to pay for reindeer and other travelling expenses; but the
Finns and the Lapps are a God-fearing people.

The first day, I came to a place occupied by a single man. The house was
so filthy, and vermin apparently so plentiful, that I whispered to my
Lapp guide, "Let us go on." The Lapp was so tired that he looked at me
with astonishment, and seemed to say: "Are not these comfortable
quarters?"

We got into our sleighs, however, and further on we stopped and tied our
reindeer together. The Lapp slept in his sleigh covered with a reindeer
skin, and I in my bag.

The next day we halted before a farm. It was dark. There we intended to
spend the night. The people do not lock their doors, neither do they
knock to obtain admittance. So we entered. The family were all in bed. A
man lighted a light. Such filth I thought