ep snow, while Eric shook himself and
started again. My deer now turned and made for the caravan, but I
succeeded in pulling his head around, when he charged a second time upon
Eric, who threw himself out of his pulk to escape. My strength was fast
giving way, when we came to a ridge of deep, loose snow, in which the
animals sank above their bellies, and up which they could hardly drag
us. My deer was so exhausted when we reached the top, that I had no
further difficulty in controlling him.

Before us stretched a trackless plain, bounded by a low mountain ridge.
Eric set off at a fast trot, winding hither and thither, as his deer
followed the invisible path. I kept close behind him, white as a Polar
bear, but glowing like a volcano under my furs. The temperature was 10 deg.
below zero, and I could have wished it ten degrees colder. My deer,
although his first savage strength was spent, was still full of spirit,
and I began to enjoy this mode of travel. We soon entered the hills,
which were covered with thickets of frozen birch, with here and there a
tall Scotch fir, completely robed in snow. The sun, which had showed
about half his disc at noon, was now dipping under the horizon, and a
pure orange glow lighted up the dazzling masses of the crystal woods.
All was silver-clear, far and near, shining, as if by its own light,
with an indescribable radiance. We had struck upon a well-beaten track
on entering the hills, and flew swiftly along through this silent
splendour, this jewelled solitude, under the crimson and violet mode of
the sky. Here was true Northern romance; here was poetry beyond all the
Sagas and Eddas that ever were written.

We passed three Lapps, with heavy hay-sleds, drawn by a reindeer apiece,
and after a time issued from the woods upon a range of hills entirely
bare and white. Before us was the miserable hamlet of Lappajarvi, on the
western side of the barren mountain of Lippavara, which is the highest
in this part of Lapland, having an altitude of 1900 feet above the sea.
I have rarely seen anything quite so bleak and God-forsaken as this
village. A few low black huts, in a desert of snow--that was all. We
drove up to a sort of station-house, where an old, white-headed Finn
received me kindly, beat the snow off my poesk with a birch broom, and
hung my boa near the fire to dry. There was a wild, fierce-looking Lapp
in the room, who spoke some Norwegian, and at once asked who and what I
was. His head wa