ciable soul, but lived in such out-of-the-way places that he seldom
saw anyone to talk to except the peasants, and it was a great treat, he
said, to meet some of his fellow-countrymen, and his satisfaction knew
no bounds when he heard that one of us hailed from Lancashire, near his
old home.

From Karungi we had to drive to Haparanda. Our carriage was already
booked by telegram, but a very irate gentleman from Port Said got into
it with his family and declined to get out, using such dreadful
language that I wondered the snow did not begin to sizzle. We did not
want to have a scene there, so when "St. Raphael" said if we would wait
till the evening he would take us over by starlight, we graciously let
the dusky gentleman with the bad temper keep our carriage.

We went in the meantime to the little wooden inn and ate largely of
strange dishes, dried reindeer flesh, smoked strips of salmon, lax, I
think it is called, served with a curious sweet sauce, and drank many
glasses of tea. At 9 P. M. behold an open motor-car arrived to
take us the thirty miles' drive to Haparanda. It seemed absolutely
absurd to see a motor-car up there on the edge of the Arctic Circle,
where there was not even a proper road. There were several reindeer
sleighs about, and I felt that one of those would have been much more in
keeping. The drivers look most attractive, they wear very gay reindeer
leggings, big sheep-skin coats and wild-looking wolf-skin caps.

The frozen track was so uneven that we rocked from side to side, and
were thrown violently about in the car, like little kernels in a very
large nut. But it was a wonderful night all the same, the air was thin
and intoxicating like champagne, and the stars up in these northern
latitudes more dazzlingly brilliant than anything I have seen before. We
had to get out at Haparanda and walk over the long bridge which led to
Torneo, where the Finnish Custom House was, and where our luggage and
passports had to be examined.

We arrived there very cheerful and well pleased with ourselves, to find
all our old travelling companions waiting till the Custom House was
open; the bishop and his party; the bad-tempered man and his family; a
Russian and a Chinese student who were travelling together, and some
others. They had been waiting in the cold for hours, and had not had
their papers or luggage examined yet, so we had had the best of it after
all.

And we scored yet once more, for "St. Raphael," who s