use we found
only a woman with the usual troop of children, the eldest of whom, a boy
of sixteen, was splitting fir to make torches. I called out
"_hevorste!_" (horses), to which he made a deliberate answer, and went
on with his work. After some consultation with the old woman, a younger
boy was sent off somewhere, and we sat down to await the result. I
called for meat, milk, bread, and butter, which procured us in course of
time a pitcher of cold milk, some bread made of ground barley straw,
horribly hard and tough, and a lump of sour frozen butter. There was
some putrid fish in a wooden bowl, on which the family had breakfasted,
while an immense pot of sour milk, butter, broken bread, and straw
meal, hanging over the fire, contained their dinner. This was testimony
enough to the accounts we had heard in Stockholm, of the year's famine
in Finland; and we seemed likely to participate in it.

I chewed the straw bread vigorously for an hour, and succeeded in
swallowing enough to fill my stomach, though not enough to satisfy my
hunger. The younger children occupied themselves in peeling off the soft
inner bark of the fir, which they ate ravenously. They were handsome,
fair-skinned youngsters, but not so rosy and beautiful as those of the
Norrland Swedes. We were obliged to wait more than two hours before the
horses arrived, thus losing a large part of our daylight. The postilions
fastened our sleds behind their own large sledges, with flat runners,
which got through the snow more easily than ours. We lay down in the
sledge, stretched ourselves at full length upon a bed of hay, covered
our feet with the deerskin, and set off. We had gone about a Swedish
mile when the postilions stopped to feed the horses before a house on
the Russian side. There was nobody within, but some coals among the
ashes on the hearth showed that it had been used, apparently, as a place
of rest and shelter. A tall, powerful Finn, who was travelling alone,
was there, smoking his pipe. We all sat down and did likewise, in the
bare, dark hut. There were the three Finns, in complete dresses of
reindeer skin, and ourselves, swaddled from head to foot, with only a
small segment of scarlet face visible between our frosted furs and icy
beards. It was a true Arctic picture, as seen by the pale dawn which
glimmered on the wastes of snow outside.

We had a poor horse, which soon showed signs of breaking down,
especially when we again entered a belt of country