rawn for a little while, but lay in wait, ready to spring down as
soon as the protecting sunshine should fail.

The lady had one harmless tumble into the mud, and we were all pretty
well fatigued with our rough walk, when we reached the Lapp encampment.
It consisted only of two families, who lived in their characteristic
_gammes_, or huts of earth, which serve them also for winter dwellings.
These burrows were thrown up on a grassy meadow, beside a rapid stream
which came down from the fjeld; and at a little distance were two folds,
or _corrals_ for their reindeer, fenced with pickets slanting outward. A
number of brown-haired, tailless dogs, so much resembling bear-cubs that
at first sight we took them for such, were playing about the doors. A
middle-aged Lapp, with two women and three or four children, were the
inmates. They scented profit, and received us in a friendly way,
allowing the curious strangers to go in and out at pleasure, to tease
the dogs, drink the reindeer milk, inspect the children, rock the baby,
and buy horn spoons to the extent of their desire. They were smaller
than the Lapps of Kautokeino--or perhaps the latter appeared larger in
their winter dresses--and astonishingly dirty. Their appearance is much
more disgusting in summer than in winter, when the snow, to a certain
extent, purifies everything. After waiting an hour or more, the herd
appeared descending the fjeld, and driven toward the fold by two young
Lapps, assisted by their dogs. There were about four hundred in all,
nearly one-third being calves. Their hoarse bleating and the cracking
noise made by their knee-joints, as they crowded together into a dense
mass of grey, mossy backs, made a very peculiar sound; and this combined
with their ragged look, from the process of shedding their coats of
hair, did not very favourably impress those of our party who saw them
for the first time. The old Lapp and his boy, a strapping fellow of
fifteen, with a ruddy, olive complexion and almost Chinese features,
caught a number of the cows with lassos, and proceeded to wean the young
deer by anointing the mothers' dugs with cow-dung, which they carried in
pails slung over their shoulders. In this delightful occupation we left
them, and returned to Tromsoe.

As we crossed the mouth of the Ulvsfjord, that evening we had an open
sea horizon toward the north, a clear sky, and so much sunshine at
eleven o'clock that it was evident the Polar day had dawned upon