tand on their legs;
their hoofs could not possibly hold on fast to the ice. We got out of
our sleighs to help them. I said to myself that reindeer ought to be
shod, especially to go over the ice.

It was awful--the poor beasts made frantic efforts to get on, but could
not. I thought we should never be able to cross the lake, and that we
should be obliged to abandon the reindeer, or try to put them into our
sleighs, and drag these ourselves to the shore. But we watched our
opportunity, and when a layer of snow was blown in our way, we succeeded
in making some headway. At last we reached the shore, after three or
four hours of hard work.

The Lapps received us very kindly.

That night I heard the weird and dismal howls of foxes. They sounded so
strange in the stillness of darkness. In the morning I asked the Lapps
how many kinds of foxes were found in the country. "There are red, blue,
and black foxes," they answered. "During the Bear's Night or winter
months the blue foxes and the gray hares turn white; the fur of the
black fox is tipped with white, and he is known as the silver-gray fox,
the fur thus tipped being very valuable. The ptarmigan also, a species
of grouse, turns white during the Bear's Night."

I asked the Lapps, "Why do you call the winter months the 'Bear's
Night'?"

"Because," one replied, "in this land the bears sleep all through the
winter months."

"Goodness!" I exclaimed; "then the bear has a sleep that lasts five or
six months, and even more?"

"Yes," the Lapp replied.

"Are there any bears here," I asked, "that are sleeping in the
neighborhood?--for I should like immensely to stir one up."

"There are none this year," he replied.

Then I said to him, "Let us go fox hunting, for I should like to get
some white and silver-gray fox-skins. We will build a snow house for
our camp to shelter ourselves." One of the Lapps, called Jakob, agreed
to go with me.

Besides hunting foxes, we were to trap ermines and kill white hares, for
I wanted to have a rug of their skins. I remembered that I had slept
between two rugs of white hare skins, and how beautiful, soft, and warm
they were.

After this talk Jakob went off after reindeer, and returned with three
of them. In a short time our preparations for camping were made. We took
with us our sleeping-bags, some reindeer meat, a little salt, some hard
bread, a coffee kettle, coffee, a small iron pot to cook our food in,
two wooden shovels to help us