few courageous radishes and some fool-hardy potatoes, which had ventured
above ground without the least chance of living long enough to blossom.
The snow had been four feet deep in the streets in the beginning of
June, and in six weeks it would begin to fall again. A few forlorn cows
were hunting pasture over the hills, now and then looking with
melancholy resignation at the strings of codfish heads hanging up to
dry, on the broth of which they are fed during the winter. I took a walk
and made a sketch during the afternoon, but the wind was so chill that
I was glad to come back shivering to our quarters.

We obtained lodgings at the house of a baker, named Aas, who had learned
the art of charging, and was therefore competent to conduct a hotel. In
order to reach our room, we were obliged to pass successively through
the family dwelling-room, kitchen, and a carpenter's workshop, but our
windows commanded a full view of a grogshop across the way, where
drunken Lapps were turned out with astonishing rapidity. It was the
marriage month of the Lapps, and the town was full of young couples who
had come down to be joined, with their relatives and friends, all in
their gayest costumes. Through the intervention of the postmaster, I
procured two women and a child, as subjects for a sketch. They were
dressed in their best, and it was impossible not to copy the leer of
gratified vanity lurking in the corners of their broad mouths. The
summer dress consisted of a loose gown of bright green cloth, trimmed on
the neck and sleeves with bands of scarlet and yellow, and a peculiar
head-dress, shaped like a helmet, but with a broader and flatter crest,
rounded in front. This, also, was covered with scarlet cloth, and
trimmed with yellow and blue. They were greatly gratified with the
distinction, and all the other Lapps, as in Kautokeino, would have
willingly offered themselves. I found the same physical characteristics
here as there--a fresh, ruddy complexion, inclining to tawny; bright
blue eyes, brown hair, high cheek-bones, and mouths of enormous width.
They are not strikingly below the average size, Heine says, in one of
his mad songs:

"In Lapland the people are dirty,
Flat-headed, and broad-mouthed, and small
They squat round the fire while roasting
Their fishes, and chatter and squall;"

which is as good a description of them as can be packed into a stanza.
On the present occasion they were all drunk, in