rom my breath, and helped to
keep in the warmth. The road was hard and smooth as marble. We had good
horses, and leaving Avasaxa and the polar circle behind us, we sped down
the solid bed of the Tornea to Niemis. On the second stage we began to
freeze for want of food. The air was really terrible; nobody ventured
out of doors who could stay in the house. The smoke was white and dense,
like steam; the wind was a blast from the Norseman's hell, and the touch
of it on your face almost made you scream. Nothing can be more
severe--flaying, branding with a hot iron, cutting with a dull knife,
&c., may be something like it, but no worse.

The sun rose through the frozen air a little after nine, and mounted
quite high at noon. At Packila we procured some hot milk and smoked
reindeer, tolerable horses and a stout boy of fourteen to drive our
baggage-sled. Every one we met had a face either frozen, or about to
freeze. Such a succession of countenances, fiery red, purple, blue,
black almost, with white frost spots, and surrounded with rings of icy
hair and fur, I never saw before. We thanked God again and again that
our faces were turned southward, and that the deadly wind was blowing on
our backs. When we reached Korpikila, our boy's face, though solid and
greasy as a bag of lard, was badly frozen. His nose was quite white and
swollen, as if blistered by fire, and there were frozen blotches on both
cheeks. The landlord rubbed the parts instantly with rum, and performed
the same operation on our noses.

On this day, for the first time in more than a month, we saw daylight,
and I cannot describe how cheering was the effect of those pure, white,
brilliant rays, in spite of the iron landscape they illumined. It was no
longer the setting light of the level Arctic sun; not the twilight
gleams of shifting colour, beautiful, but dim; not the faded, mock
daylight which sometimes glimmered for a half-hour at noon; but the true
white, full, golden day, which we had almost forgotten. So nearly,
indeed, that I did not for some time suspect the cause of the unusual
whiteness and brightness. Its effect upon the trees was superb. The
twigs of the birch and the needles of the fir were coated with crystal,
and sparkled like jets of jewels spouted up from the immaculate snow.
The clumps of birches can be compared to nothing but frozen
fountains--frozen in full action, with their showery sheaves of spray
arrested before they fell. It was a wonderfu