LAPLANDERS.
"IT shall not be a hot country next time," said Lucy, "though, after
all, the whale oil was not much worse than the castor oil.--Mother
Bunch, did your whaler always go to Greenland, and never to any nicer
place?"
"Well, Missie, once we were driven between foul winds and icebergs up
into a fiord near North Cape, right at midsummer, and I'll never forget
what we saw there."
[Illustration: And here beside her was a little fellow with a bow and
arrows, such as she had never seen before.
_Page 64._]
Lucy was not likely to forget, either, for she found herself standing by
a narrow inlet of sea, as blue and smooth as a lake, and closely shut
in, except on the west, with red rocky hills and precipices with
pine-trees growing on them, except where the bare rock was too steep, or
where on a somewhat smoother shelf stood a timbered house, with a
farm-yard and barns all round it. But the odd thing was that the sun was
where she had never seen him before,--quite in the north, making all the
shadows come the wrong way. But how came the sun to be visible at all so
very late? Ah! she knew it now; this was Norway, and there was no night
at all!
And here beside her was a little fellow with a bow and arrows, such as
she had never seen before, except in the hands of the little Cupids in
the pictures in the drawing-room. Mother Bunch had said that the little
brown boys in India looked like the bronze Cupid who was on the
mantelshelf, but this little boy was white, or rather sallow-faced, and
well dressed too, in a tight, round, leather cap, and a dark blue
kind of shaggy gown with hairy leggings; and what he was shooting at
was some kind of wild-duck or goose, that came tumbling down heavily
with the arrow right across its neck.
"There," said the boy, "I'll take that, and sell it to the Norse
bonder's wife up in the house above there."
"Who are you, then?" said Lucy.
"I'm a Lapp. We live on the hills, where the Norseman has not driven us
away, and the reindeer find their grass in summer and their moss in
winter."
"Oh! have you got reindeer? I should so like to see them and to drive in
a sledge!"
The boy, whose name was Peder, laughed, and said, "You can't go in a
sledge except when it is winter, with snow and ice to go upon, but I'll
soon show you a reindeer."
Then he led the way, past the deliciously smelling, whispering
pine-woods that sheltered the Norwegian homestead, starting a little
aside when a great, tall, fair-faced, fair-haired Norse farmer came
striding along, singing some old old song, as he carried a heavy log on
his shoulder, past a seater or mountain meadow where the girls were
pasturing their cows, much like Lucy's friends in the Tirol, out upon
the grey moorland, where there was an odd little cluster of tents
covered with skins, and droll little, short, stumpy people running about
them.
Peder gave a curious long cry, put his hand in his pocket, and pulled
out a lump of salt. Presently, a pair of long horns appeared, then
another, then a whole herd of the deer with big heads and horns growing
a good deal forward. The salt was held to them, and a rope was fastened
to all their horns that they might stand still in a line, while the
little Lapp women milked them. Peder went up to one of the women, and
brought back a little cupful for his visitor; it was all that one deer
gave, but it was so rich as to be almost like drinking cream. He led her
into one of the tents, but it was very smoky, and not much cleaner than
the Esquimaux. It is a wonder how Lucy could go to sleep there, but she
did, heartily wishing herself somewhere else.