INTO THE LAND OF HORRIBLE FLIES: A NARRATIVE
OF PERSONALLY-CONDUCTED TRAVEL
It was manifestly absurd to drag the Marlin and its cartridges any
farther. In the first case there was absolutely no probability of
finding big game for it to shoot; in the second it was more than likely
that carriers would be unprocurable farther inside the country, and we
should have to hump all necessaries on our own backs, and the rifle
would have to be jettisoned. In mid-Lapland it was unlikely also that we
should find a purchaser, and here in Enare one offered. Who does not
know the delights of doing a trade? We sold the Marlin for the price it
had cost in London town, and threw in the cartridges as ballast to the
bargain. It was the postmaster who bought; and in the joy of his
purchase he put the Marlin to his shoulder, aimed at a hut some fifty
yards away, and pulled trigger. The result was surprising. The bullet
went in at one side of the hut and out at the other, and as the
inhabitants happened to be within at the time, they came out hurriedly,
and looking distinctly worried. The postmaster was only acquainted up to
then with the penetrative power of the local weapon. So this performance
of the Marlin made him dance with delight.
His thirst was whetted. He had tasted the delights of owning one good
weapon, and he wanted another, and he cast his eyes upon it with frank
longing. Now our 12-bore shot-gun would not have been classed in England
as excellent; indeed it would barely have toed the mark at tolerable. It
was an old friend certainly; it had done good service in many climes,
and it had seen so many things that its owner was devoutly thankful it
could not talk. But it showed the batterings of travel. Its stock was
scored and scarred; its barrel was browned more by oil and tallow rubbed
on bright-red rust than by the more scientific method of the gunsmith's
shop. It had been spoken of by a whisky miller in the Great Smoky
Mountains of Tennessee (who used shot-guns in the defence of his
business) as homely; it had been described in more than one stately home
of England as "that qualified old blunderbuss"; and its owner always
started out across the seas from his native island with the advice,
"Now, don't bring that rotten old tin spout back this time."
Still it had its points, that much-abused old gun. Held straight, it was
deadly enough. It had many a time carried a ball in its right barrel
with sound effect; and once, in Africa, when in a moment of stress and
panic the ball cartridge was slipped into the left barrel, which was
alleged to be "full choke," it eased itself of the charge without
bursting, although it nearly did dislocate the firer's shoulder in the
recoil by way of remonstrance. And at the same time it performed most
thoroughly the requisite business with the bullet.
It was one of those guns which was probably always second-hand, and it
had never been a high-class weapon even in its palmy days. Even its
builder had sent it out into the cold, suspicious world without the
testimonial of his name. Yet the man who carried it so many miles
through so many scenes, and slept by its side before camp-fires, and
nursed it in his lap through many a weary hour when--well, when things
were not exactly so smooth as they might have been, and grumbled at its
weight under tropical suns, and swore when he missed his supper with it,
and got hot when jeerers made sport of its battered ugliness,--that man,
I say, would give more than one crisp note to-day if he might have it
stored away at home in some dark corner near at hand, from where he
could take it out at times and abuse it with rough, friendly words, as
one old chum abuses another. He would like to lift it in his fingers
again, and put his chin against that piece of spun yarn which was served
round the stock where--pah! what nonsense is this? The gun was not fit
to carry. It was absurd to go about with such a weapon, when better guns
were so handy. And if (as a matter of accurate fact) it was rather more
serviceable than any of the other guns in Enare, why, of course, the
people up there were little better than rank barbarians, and what could
be expected of their artillery?
* * * * *
And so at Enare the old gun remained, and forty marks exchanged hands
over the transaction. We travelled thereafter the lighter by several
pounds of dead weight, and we did not miss the weapon's usefulness. Even
had we condescended to the murder of nursing mothers, we could barely
have filled a decent game-bag with birds from one end of the country to
the other. So one wished the postmaster good luck with his purchase; but
many a thought went backwards after the old gun's welfare, and many a
sighing hope was registered that the new owner would entreat it
tenderly.
The postmaster was the active spirit of Enare Town, and we made a good
move in securing his vote and influence. He could not give us any
information about much of our journey, it is true, because, as he
explained before, all his experience of passage in and out of the
country had been by the Sodankya route; but at least he could put us in
the way of negotiating the first stage. He sent round word, and, after a
delay, carriers came to our dwelling with thongs of reindeer harness in
their hands ready to strap on their packs. But when they heard what was
required, they demurred. They had no taste for wandering away into the
distant wilderness. The postmaster delivered to them an hour's animated
lecture in Qfinsk before they would even think of it. Then they replied
with more objections, and thus for two more solid hours the argument
went on. There were three carriers--two Lapps and a Finn--and they stood
in a row with their mouths open, and looked rather limp and dejected
whilst the postmaster railed at them and detailed their prospective
duties. A decorative background of Lapps arranged itself behind the
group and watched proceedings with curiosity and attention. They rather
regarded us as villagers elsewhere do a travelling circus.
We impressed upon the postmaster that what we really would like was one
reliable carrier who would go through the country with us as far as
Kittila, and engage the other carriers and guides as they were needed
along the route--you see our demands by this time were getting simpler.
We had quite given up the idea of the combined guide-interpreter person;
and the postmaster urged this proposition with fluency and noise. He
pointed out the easiness with which such a piece of work could be done.
He dwelt upon the wealth which would accrue to the happy man who did it.
But the three carriers did not warm to the scheme one little bit. They
merely looked frightened, and shook their heads, and the Finn paid us
the compliment of glancing in our direction, and then turning away with
a perceptible shudder.
The postmaster gave it up. "Very well," said he, "then you shall just
take them the first stage to Lusaniemi, and then they must get other
carriers."
The faces brightened at once. They were very like children these Lapps
and Northern Finns. And they set about making up the packs to their
fancy, and getting them strapped to their shoulders with the thongs of
reindeer hide. The word went round, and the houses exuded more men,
children, and women, all smiling their goodwill, all anxious to wish us
God-speed. One wrinkled old crone of a woman, long past walking, was
dragged up by her grandchildren in one of the boat-like reindeer sledges
that she might not miss the spectacle.
We were all ready to start, when one more request was made for--shall we
say, a souvenir. Would we fire one shot with the Marlin at a mark to
show how good an aim Englishmen can make with a heavy rifle?
Was there ever a more embarrassing favour asked? We had made a good
impression on Enare--there was not a doubt of it; and here was an
excellent chance of destroying it in a single moment before the
assembled community. But there was no evasion possible, and so one of us
shouldered the rifle, took a quick sight on the mark they pointed out
(and which he could only just see), and pressed delicately on the hair
trigger. The bullet sped, and the crowd ran off to see the result. It
was a lucky shot; it had blundered in "plum-centre"; and furthermore, it
had pierced in through the log wall of the house on which the mark was
set, and out again on the opposite side. Whatever else had happened, the
reputation of the Marlin rifle for penetration was established in the
Lapp capital for good and always. We were so overcome by the warmth of
the multitude of the subsequent good-byes, that I regret to say we
marched off neglecting to pay a debt of tenpence to the good lady with
whom we lodged.
Our escort left us at the last of the dozen houses which formed the
town, and from there on, excepting for one or two turf _gamme_ of pariah
hunters, we came across no human dwellings for some time. The way lay
through a thick and fairly tall forest, mostly of pines and birches,
though in places there was a heavy jungle of shrubs and undergrowth.
There were no birds, and no sign of larger game. Only insects abounded.
For awhile we had a trail to walk on, but this grew more disused, and
finally vanished, and more than once we got astray, and had to make
sharp turnings to recover the direction.
It was not altogether country that would have suited a bicyclist. There
were rivers to plod through, and swamps to clog one, cliffs to scramble
up and down, and thickets to disarrange one's personal appearance, and
most effectually to tear a mosquito veil if one had been worn. As a main
direction, we were heading east along the flank of a steep valley, with
hills on one side and a deep river on the other, which sometimes broke
up into noisy rapids. As a general thing the trees closed us in, but now
and again we got out on to rising ground, and found a view which it was
worth stopping to look at.
The pace of our caravan now, was very different from that detestable
slouch we had been forced to put up with at the north of Enare See. We
logged off a good steady four miles to the hour, and after the first
stop (which always comes early on a march, to get the loads finally
adjusted) halts were pleasingly infrequent. The two Lapps were the
willingest fellows on earth, and the solitary, high-booted Finn,
although he was a poorer creature, was forced to keep up with his
better's lead. The elder Lapp, who headed the advance, was a
melancholy-faced man of some personal beauty. He had lost his wife a few
months before, had had his house burnt on the top of that, and so found
himself, in middle life, changed from a prosperous family man to a
homeless widower; and these things do not tend to cheer a man. He was a
dull, capable servant, but we could not bring ourselves to like him.
Johann, the younger Lapp, was a very different animal. We took him to be
aged eighteen, though he turned out afterwards to be ten years older
than that estimate. He stood about four feet ten inches high in his
_lappellinin_, and the full curve of his bandy legs was charmingly
exhibited by the skin-tight white-flannel garments which covered them.
He had a quaintly ugly face, beardless as a girl's, and thatched above
by a fell of coarse, black hair; and with his gaily-piped _matsoreo_ off
and packed against his load (as he always carried it on the march), and
a tight, striped jersey covering his upper man, he was an exact
reproduction of the peripatetic acrobat one comes across at English
fairs and seaside summer beaches. Indeed one could never quite get over
the idea that he was merely playing the part of carrier for a joke, and
that some day, quite unexpectedly, he would doff his load, produce a
square of threadbare carpet, and go through some entertaining
contortions, and afterwards hand round his wooden coffee-bowl for
coppers.
He was a fellow of infinite thews and a boundless appetite for hilarity.
He always had the heaviest load foisted on him, and received it with a
joke and a grimace; and after the most wearisome march he could always
tell funny tales, and laugh uproariously at his own excessive wit. In
his personal habits he was an irresponsible savage; but in a land where
everybody was accustomed to do everything for themselves, he was
surprisingly thoughtful and attentive. For instance, after he had been
drinking at a stream, he frequently offered his wooden cup to one of us
that we might drink with niceness also, instead of being forced to lap
the water up like a dog; and more than once, when our kettle and the
carriers' were heating together on a camp-fire, he has burnt his own
fingers that he might take our kettle off and hand it to us. Indeed in
these little attentions he distinguished himself above all his
countrymen we met, and perhaps it was partly for this reason along with
the others that we grew so much to like him.
* * * * *
Two deserted villages did we pass through on this march, with their few
mouldering remnants of huts and clearings almost blotted into forest by
the second growth. In one of them there was an especially picturesque
bit, and we came to a halt, and Hayter sat himself on the wreck of an
old reindeer sledge and tried to sketch it. He was prepared for
annoyance from the mosquitoes, and he got it. He battled with them
bravely for a long time: he smoked like a chimney; he slapped himself
with frantic industry; and at last he gave it up in despair. He had
covered three pages of his sketch-book with blood--his own blood--and
pencil scratches, and dishevelled insect corpses, and he certainly did
get three good impressionist sketches of the atmospheric condition, but
he carried away no intelligible note of the ruined huts and the
clearing.
The carriers shouldered their loads again, and we knocked out our
tobacco into the grass; but the caravan did not start till the two
Lapps had come up and carefully stamped out any smoulder which might
remain.
All trails which might at one time lead out of that village were long
since grown up. The forest is always greedy to take back any territory
of which man has robbed it. So we had to make our own path as we
progressed, and pressed on through clinging undergrowth. The dim roar of
the foss down in the valley rumbled through the air, but no birds
lightened the march with their songs. Occasionally the straining ear
thought it caught the cry of some feathered creature, but it always
turned out (on seeking deeper) to be tree-branches grinding together in
imitation of bird sounds.
Ant-hills, built of pine-needles and clay, perched under the trees on
the steep hillside, with gallery entrances into them of the bigness of
peas, and a marvellous insect busyness pervading all their
neighbourhood. They were not so large as those pine-needle ant-hills one
meets with in north-western Norway, and of course were dwarfed by the
huge ant-mounds of Africa, but they ran to a goodly size here in the
Enare district, often reaching to a four-foot height above a seven-foot
base.
We had passed the noisy falls by this time, and when we could catch
sight of it through the trees, we could make out that the farther side
of the valley was moving away from us. We were working downwards all
the time, and presently we stepped out from the cover and stood on the
sand beaches of Muddusjärvi.
It was necessary to cross this lake before we could get any farther, and
the packs were thrown down, and we proceeded to telegraph our need to a
tiny farm on the other side. The Finn did not help. He was driven half
mad with the mosquitoes, and he lay on the sand, with his head wrapped
in his coat, writhing with the irritation of his bites. But we others
dragged some dead wood to the extreme water's edge, and shredded it with
our sheath-knives, and set it alight, and coaxed it into a goodly flame.
And then we added more fuel, and still more. There is always plenty of
dead wood ready to hand in these austere forests, which no one but
Nature herself cuts or cares for, and we dragged down whole trees to
dedicate them to the flames.
The lake was dim with mist, and a clear signal was imperative; and
Johann, the eccentric, must needs climb trees and dance upon dead
branches, crooning music to himself, till he and the branch came
crashing down to the ground. He was a weird creature. So we made this
beacon of ours no niggling flicker. We had got to make our presence
known and our needs understood; so we built us a royal blaze which
roared, and writhed, and rose high into heaven; and then we ranged
ourselves in the valley of smoke which drifted to leeward (to keep out
of the mosquitoes' reach), and one by one stepped out and hailed at the
upmost stretch of our voices, that some one, we did not know who, might
bring across a boat.
It was a good opportunity to experiment for the best travelling note of
sound. The Echoes from their perches on the frowning hillsides across
the lake appointed themselves judges, unasked, and we mortals began the
contest.
First Johann coughed the wood-smoke from his lungs and ran forward as
though he were going to throw a cricket ball, and set back his
shoulders, and yelled out a sort of dog-yap on two high notes. He
scored, but not heavily.
The other Lapp lifted up his head and emitted a melancholy howl like a
wolf's. We listened. Yes, that certainly carried farther.
The Finn lay on the ground, with head shrouded from the insects with his
coat, and would not compete. So we foreigners in our turn cooeed, after
the Australian fashion, and the Echoes, fickle ladies that they were,
awarded the palm to the newer, stranger, imported sound. They cooeed
back that the cooee won by an easy thousand yards.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE SIGNAL FIRE.]
Water-mists hung in filmy layers above the lake, and thickened as the
hours drew on. Patience and more fuel to the beacon were the only things
that would help us, and we applied them both assiduously. And when we
were not working, we sat where the smoke of the fire could drift solidly
over us, and those gentlemen of England who sit at home at ease, and
have never seen the mosquito at his worst, do not understand the luxury
of it. There are not many insects whose proud boast it is that they can
make the monarch man find stinging wood-reek fascinating.
"_Illi robur et aes triplex
Circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci
Commisit pelago ratem
Primus_,"
wrote Horace in the days gone by; but unknown lands, had he known it,
can contain far more horrid torments than the unknown sea.
* * * * *
But at last our vigil and beckoning came to an end. Through the gray
lake-mists there loomed out a hazy dot of a deeper gray. It grew and
blackened, and resolved itself into a canoe, spiritlessly sent along by
a single paddler. We watched its approach with warming hearts. And lo!
the solitary paddler was a woman, old, bent, and toothless. All her
men-kind were away, it seemed, fishing up a farther arm of the lake. It
was a year since she had been in a boat, because of her rheumatism.
Moreover she had been in bed, and so our beacon had been lost on her,
and being rather deaf, our shouts had fallen but dimly upon her notice.
She hoped, with fluttering courtesy, that we would forgive her
dilatoriness. Poor old crone! we shook hands with her all round, and
soon let her know where the indebtedness was placed.
But the canoe was small, perilously small, and leaky, and it obviously
would not hold the party of us. So the packs were piled in on to the wet
floor-boards, and we foreigners paddled off to an appointed place where
there was a larger craft, and we took the old lady, enthroned on a brown
canvas sack, as an honoured passenger. The carriers tossed the remaining
embers of the fire into the lake, carefully extinguishing with water
every remaining spark, and then they went round by the beaches to meet
us; and we ran the other canoe down into the lake, and made the
trans-shipment, and paddled off in triumph. The old woman watched all
passively. She was past the age of doing much for herself, or giving
directions. She had a strong face, but the days of initiative had passed
from her, and it must have been by a marvellous and unaccustomed
exercise of will that she roused from her bed, and brought that first
canoe across through the dank lake-mists to succour us. We recognised
this, and I think we were duly thankful.
We beached the canoe before the little farm, and went up to the hut
there and took possession as a matter of course. There is an entire lack
of formality about quartering yourself in your neighbour's house in
Arctic Lapland.
The old woman, with her latent housewifely instincts aroused, pottered
about with a burning green branch to drive away the intruding mosquito.
There were two rooms to the hut--a general living-room, and a tiny
cupboard-like chamber which held two box-beds. There was a pet reindeer
calf in the larger room, a frail, stilt-legged creature of the bigness
of a greyhound, with a hoarse, dog's bark. It had an amazing knack of
getting into every one's way, and sucked without invitation every finger
that dangled within its reach. Of food about the place there was no
single scrap. Milk, fish, bread, were all unprocurable. And so we were
reduced to "killing a tin" from our scanty store, and making a sketchy
meal off preserved dainties, which seemed to provoke the appetite rather
than appease it. Ours was the smaller room, and we lit a fire on the
stone hearth, and brewed milkless, sugarless cocoa, and finished up with
a dessert of that and cigarettes.
The warmth grew in the little chamber, and there was a dry floor of
boards beneath us. The mosquitoes, too, seemed for the moment to have
left us. Here seemed an opportunity for taking off our clothes, the
first for many days. The scars on the vulnerable parts beneath them were
cruel. Hayter's legs and knees were so swollen with the bites that he
could not rid himself of his breeches until he had slit the bands of
them with his knife. Our arms were tight in the sleeves of our coats;
our hands were the size of boxing-gloves; we were both of us bloodied
and blotched all over with the treatment we had undergone.
Personally I got on to one of the beds and fell asleep there in the act
of filling a final pipe. But Hayter did not get so far. He was seated on
the floor when I saw him last, reeving a new lace in one of his boots;
and when I roused in the morning, he was still upon the floor, with the
lace in one hand and the boot under his head. I fancy we must have been
a trifle worn out when we finally reached the shelter of that little
farm on Muddusjärvi.
* * * * *
We were woke by Johann at 5.30 the next morning (after three hours'
sleep), but did not make a start of it much before eight. We were bound
up the lake, and as a paddle had been broken in the landing overnight,
another had to be hacked out of the solid tree with axe and knife before
we could leave. You may use another man's property if you find it lying
about in Lapland, but you are expected to make all damage good. As
Johann pointed out, it is sometimes a profitable move to leave an old
paddle or a battered pair of _ski_ where the chance, needy stranger can
lay hold of them, as by that means he does the breaking, and one gets
provided with brand-new implements free of trouble. And there is no fear
of being taken in by some one who is incompetent to do the requisite
carpentering. Axe and knife, and more rarely a saw, are the only tools
in the country, and within all its marches one could not find a grown,
sound man unable to use all three with deftness.
We paid off our Finn carrier at this point, and gave the old lady of the
house two marks, at which she nearly bowed herself in two. And then we
embarked in the canoe again, with the two Lapps paddling, one the bows,
and one aft, and set off up the lake.
Muddusjärvi is narrow here, and contracts still more farther on, till
one could well set it down as a mere currentless river. It sits quietly
between its low banks, and is fed from the low, hummocky hills on the
northern side, and by the higher hills beyond them. There is thick cover
in beyond these banks, but no sign of game anywhere.
Reed grasses which scraped against the canoe's tarry side were beginning
to grow in the shallows, and then, just as the lake was beginning to
widen again, we landed before a cluster of three huts, and tried for
carriers. Johann and the melancholy Lapp went up to do the negotiation,
and we foreigners got out of the canoe and stretched our limbs. A flock
of ten diminutive sheep, two of them black, sauntered up and nibbled at
my legs. The farm was small, but it seemed fertile and cared-for, and by
no means poverty-stricken. There was a grass-field, enclosed by
split-rail fence, and manured. And good grass it was, too, well cleared
from weeds. But there were no carriers available here, which was what
we were particularly interested in just then, so we went back to the
canoe and once more got her under way.
We opened up broad Muddusjärvi after this--a fine sheet of water,
bordered by wooded hills; but presently we turned due north again, and
paddled up a narrower arm of the lake, and landed at another Lapp farm.
This was certainly the most prosperous place that we had come across
since entering the country, and it was marvellous to think that such a
spot could exist so far inland and so deep within the Arctic Circle.
There were store sheds and outhouses running right up from the lake
beach, in all abundance; and the big, log dwelling-house itself, on the
top of the rise, was a place of mark. It had yellow window frames and a
shingle roof. Its big kitchen living-room measured twenty good feet by
five-and-twenty, and it had no less than two separate bedrooms, not to
mention the usual combined dairy-bedroom, each with a separate door of
its own.
But then this estate was no one-man farm. It doubtless had called one
man owner sometime during history; but he had begotten sons, who shared
the land between them, _more Hibernico_, and then in the recent past
these amalgamated into a sensible partnership. By dyke and axe they had
added a few more acres to the ancestral plot from the forest swamp at
the back; but only a very few: mere husbandry is of small account in
this far Northern clime. What they did was to increase the number of
nets, and build more fishing canoes, and more drying sheds in which to
cure the catch. It was from the lake they got the more important
harvest. The milk and the cheese, and the rye and the meat of sheep and
oxen, were good, but they could not be depended on. It was the fish that
never failed. No Arctic storm, no broken summer, could kill the crop of
the lake or deny it leave to ripen.
Still twenty acres of good mowing-grass had this partnership got growing
bravely in their rail-enclosed fields, and a potato garden, and a flock
of sheep, and some dozen healthy cows; and as wealth goes in Lapland,
they were rich men. But the struggle for existence up there in the North
does not permit of any idle hands. If a sufficient living is to be got,
all must work for it. There was no sitting back to enjoy a life of
moneyed ease on the shores of Muddusjärvi.
The place, as we saw it, hummed so briskly with work that we were almost
ashamed of our own unattached condition. A big catch of fish had just
been brought in from the lake, and they lay gleaming against the grass,
sorted out into tubs according to their kind, awaiting their turn for
evisceration. All spare hands were hard at this work. One of the
partners, a comparatively big man for a Lapp, gave the lead. He took his
fish up by the back, cut through three-quarters of the neck down to the
backbone, slit up the belly, emptied the guts on to the grass, and
twisted the tail-flukes through a slit in the gills, so as to keep the
flattened carcass perpetually open. Two women and a bent old man toiled
at the same work, though with less deftness; and two small girls
squatted on the grass, and picked with care the fishes' sounds from
amongst the other inconsidered debris, and washed them in water, and
stored them in a wooden bowl of birch.
In the shed built for that purpose, these finny spoils, strung on
sticks, were put up to dry. There were no salmon or trout there; they
were all coarse fish; some, of the bigness of sardines, strung through
the eyes; some, of the perch tribes, hooped into circles like those
above described; and a few stray pike, half decapitated, each on his own
especial withe, hung up like shrivelled criminals with their wicked
heads a-cock.
There was a draw-well in front of the house, with a huge, straddling
counterpoise-derrick over it in constant use. We stood by this for some
time watching the bustling life of the place. Johann came and said that
a carrier was available, but he must dine before he set out, and he
(Johann) had received an invitation to dine also. We accepted the delay,
and when one of the ladies asked us, we went up to the house. She
produced stools, and wiped them down with a corner of her skirt before
offering them to be sat on. Verily feminine human nature of a certain
class is much the same all the world over.
[Illustration: A PROSPEROUS LAPP SETTLEMENT.]
It was the dairy-bedroom we sat in, the room of state and honour, and as
it was comparatively free from mosquitoes--there were some paltry dozen
or so to remind us of our immunity--we rolled cigarettes in peace, and
Hayter produced a sketch-book. The old woman who had charge of us was
shown what was wanted, and took up her position, nothing loath. She
stood like a professional model--a rare thing in this fidgety land--and
the sketch progressed with speed.
A very happy likeness it was, and the old woman was amazed to see
herself for the first time in all a long life on paper. But she was not
altogether pleased. On some occasion during her days she had broken a
leg, which (according to the primitive method of the country) had been
set with a reef in it. When she walked this gave her a prodigious limp.
When she stood at rest upon both feet, it naturally skewed her shoulders
well out of the horizontal. The sketch faithfully reproduced this trait,
and the old lady objected in her top key. She wanted to be drawn
straight as she would like to be, and not with rugged face and halting
body, as the accident of years and weather had happened to make her. She
was very like her sisters in more favoured climes, this middle-aged dame
of Lapland.
But she did not stay arguing long. Work could not stop. She left us in
the dairy and went away to the kitchen, and the _whirr_ of a
spinning-wheel told us what was her employment.
Hayter's pencil, however, was not permitted to rest. Johann had
evidently exploited its powers, and presently he came in half-dragging,
half-leading, a younger, more comely girl, and whom he explained he was
sweet on himself. He backed her up against the wall, arranged her hands
and her head-kerchief, and explained that he would like a portrait of
her executed in the best style for his own personal use and convenience.
Her name he said was Margrete, and he mentioned that she was famed for
her skill in milking cows in the summer and making clothes during the
long nights of winter. The gay _matsoreo_ which he was at that moment
wearing himself was the outcome of her clever knife and needle.
In view of the forty-nine mile tramp ahead, Johann had annexed a bundle
of the fine, dried grass they use here in the shoes, and whilst the
sketch of his sweetheart was progressing--by the way she was only one of
his many loves--he dumped himself down acrobat-fashion on the floor and
took off his foot-gear, and arranged the packing of grass therein with
vast deliberateness and care. A small, solemn child, all bumpy about the
head from bites, came in, stark-naked, from the other room, and stayed
to stare. A couple of dogs--stout, gray, wire-coated fellows, like the
dogs of the Eskimo--added themselves unobtrusively to the audience.
A lover of trimness in the female ankle should not go to Lapland to find
his models, as the trouser, strapped on to the boot-top, is fatal to any
idea of symmetry. And in fact female personal beauty of any sort is not
there brought to any high stage of cultivation. The faces of the women
always verge towards plain, and their figures can only be described as
dumpy. But if the features of these Lappish women are homely and perhaps
rugged, at any rate they are invariably pleasant in expression, and such
a thing as a peevish face cannot be found from one side of the country
to the other. They wriggle along through life on the lean edge of
starvation. They have everlastingly to confront the struggle for the
next meal, and the meal after that, and this constant strain marks the
forehead and wrinkles the cheek; but at least they are free from those
more branding worries of larger communities, which whiten the cheek and
draw lines from the mouths of the women we know so well at home.
A cuckoo clock in the great, busy kitchen hooted half hourly. In this
land of the midnight sun and of midday night one cannot tell the time by
the heavens as the countryman does in England and lower Europe. A
timepiece of sorts is a primitive necessity, and many are the varieties
which find a use. In the larger coast towns, like Vardö, the watchmakers
drive a roaring trade, and dozens of watches with curious tooled brass
cases dangle from the rods in the windows. Up-country almost every hut
sports its clock--some investment from a winter's marketing trip in the
tiny, boat-like, reindeer sledges at Abö or Sodankyla, or even far
Helsingfors.
An ordinary solid clock does not take the Laplander's eye. He likes
something flimsy, and if possible novel. At one place, hung on a peg
driven into the logs of the wall, we were condemned to gaze hourly upon
the exasperating device of a dentifrice advertisement, wherein a smiling
young female drew a tooth-brush briskly across a beautiful set of
cardboard teeth between every tick. I was half frantic with bites at
that halt I remember, and deadly tired, and much wishful for sleep and
forgetfulness. But neither would come. Hour after hour I was condemned
to remain awake, and stare at the tooth-brush clock, and read the legend
(printed in my native tongue) that it was made in Germany, and that the
dentifrice was put up into neat packets, priced sixpence, or one
shilling, which could be obtained from any chemist with the least
presumption to call himself respectable. I argued at the time that the
clock had evidently drifted far from the land where the ingenious
advertiser destined it, seeing that the letterpress was English, and the
Laplanders do not use tooth-powder even if they could have read about
its existence. And I savagely hoped that the man who sent it out had
gone bankrupt as a penalty for annoying me. But at this peaceful
distance of time and space I am inclined to call back that wish. And
besides, I could not injure him (by conspicuously refusing to buy his
wares) even if I wished, as the name of the ingenious dentrifice has
completely passed away from me.
* * * * *
Fortune took it into her fickle head to smile on us at this halt. We got
no less than two new carriers, and rare fellows they proved to be. They
agreed after about an hour's palaver to take our packs upon their
shoulders, and once more we started down the lake. The whole population
were either on the beach, or came there to see us off. The eight ladies
who were employed in the dissection of more fish, left off that
employment for the moment, and stood up, and took of their
head-kerchiefs and waved them diligently. And Margrete came down, and
stood where the shingle was wet, and kissed her hand. Johann saw, and so
moved was he that he must needs stand up on the top of the pile of packs
to wave back, thereby very nearly upsetting the canoe and all of us. We
got hold of his bandy legs and pulled him down, and he lay on the wet
floor-boards with his head undermost, bawling with laughter, and
thinking it the best joke in all the world.
He was hinting to another girl that he would die for her, at our next
halt. He was a most fickle swain, this india-rubber Lapp.
We paddled eleven miles to the end of Muddusjärvi--or at least the Lapps
paddled; we two foreigners lay against the packs, basking in the sun,
and smoked, and lazed, and admired the colouring on the hills. And at
the end of the lake we disembarked and paid off the melancholy Lapp from
Enare, who took back the canoe. Poor fellow, he had had his troubles and
we should have pitied him. Moreover, he was intelligent, and strong, and
willing, and we should have appreciated all these qualities. But as it
was, I am afraid our principal sentiment towards him was one of dislike.
We had sufficient worries of our own for all practical purposes, and
that mournful face hanging between us and the sun did not tend to
lighten them.
The caravan limbered up and stepped out down an avenue thirty feet wide,
cut from the forest to provide for the winter sleigh traffic. The stumps
were still _in situ_; rocks and boulders were scattered about everywhere
between the grim forest-walls. An unmeddled-with undergrowth lay
breast-high all down the clearing. A tiny winding ribband of track gave
us just space in which to set our feet as we marched; and even this led
into quagmires and morasses, which we were forced to wade through or
circumnavigate. But all these obstructions would be blotted out by the
winter's snow, and the sleighs could travel briskly over the hard white
crust. Scarcely a soul moved from place to place during the bright,
soft, insect-ridden months of summer. Indeed this march was rendered
memorable by our meeting another wayfarer. He was a man dressed in the
Lapp clothes, but with a purely Tartar physiognomy, and he and we
exchanged but the chilliest of salutations. Even the cheery Johann
forbore to bestow on him his usual grin of greeting.
As though the mosquitoes were not sufficient plague (and their numbers,
if it were possible, increased) we here passed into a belt that was
peopled by still more insect horrors. Dragon-flies in millions rustled
through the air, though these did not worry us. But they were
accompanied by loathly great horse-flies, as thick as a finger, and
monstrous blue-bottles, which were maddening in their attentions. The
blue-bottle one could hear and avoid; but the attack of the horse-fly
was stealthy. The beast would fly up without a sound, and alight like a
piece of thistle-down, and one would know nothing of the matter until
one was bitten. They could go through a coat as easily as one could push
in a pin; even corduroy riding-breeches could not impede them; and on
the place of each bite, there arose in the next half hour a great wen,
which one wanted to tear out bodily by the finger-nails. That part of
Lapland would be a lepidopterist's heaven; but for any ordinarily
constituted man it came very near to being the other place.
It must be remembered, too, that if we two foreigners suffered badly
from this plague of flies, our carriers were ten times more tormented. A
man with his hands free can thresh about, and to a certain extent beat
the insects from him, unless he perishes with the exertion; but to a
carrier impeded with a pack, this form of athleticism is necessarily
limited. Our Lapps put calico cowls over their heads, which covered all
except their faces, and their faces and hands they smeared with a
liberal ointment of tar, and yet they suffered horribly. Still for all
that they made no complaint. Johann would give out his great guffaws of
laughter when things were at their worst, and the others would chime in
merrily enough. They might be miserable, but they saw no reason to make
themselves unhappy about it.
They were good fellows these two new carriers of ours. The younger one,
Pedr, was a regular Adonis in his way, and certainly the only really
handsome man we saw in Lapland. He had rare, fine features, perfect
teeth, and a beautiful smile, which he laid on whenever conversation was
demanded of him. He did not talk much; he seemed to find the smile much
more effective.
The other addition of our force of a surety had stepped straight out of
County Galway. It was true he wore a blue _matsoreo_ piped with red and
most dandily worked upon the shoulders. It was true he wore the Lapp
shoe, and the tight white-flannel Lapp trousers (all of them rather
shabby), and carried sheath-knife and tar-bottle dangling from his
embroidered belt. It is true he talked only barbarous Qfinsk, but he
spoke it with the softest, most insinuating brogue imaginable. His
whimsical, humorous face, with its two days' stubble of hair, was the
most truly Irish piece of human furniture one ever put eyes upon.
He had a blue eye and a captivating grin--grin was the only word for it.
He was always willing to do the larger share of the work, and--always
did the least. He lied to one, and grinned without shame when he was
found out. He tried brazenly and without the least concealment to
swindle us over his wages, and grinned delightedly when we objected to
paying him more than his just due. He provided us with free amusement
the whole time we had him, and did it all deliberately. To have called
such a delicious person anything else but Pat would have been an insult
both to himself and to us.
* * * * *
We had a desperately hard journey of it on this march, and, moreover,
passed nothing sufficiently interesting to note. The broad sleigh-cut
continued all the way; the forest hedged it in on either side; the path
underfoot was never level and seldom dry; and the insect plagues were a
torment too horrible even to think back upon. In the end we came upon
the swampy margin of a lake--the Menesjärvi we had heard so much
about--and there, after some searching, found a canoe pulled up amongst
the lake-side rushes.
Now the canoe was thoroughly sun-dried, and when put in the water
she leaked after the manner of a basket. Moreover, she was
small--unmistakably small. It was quite obvious to the naked eye that
she would not hold the whole caravan, and equally obvious (when one
looked at each member in turn) that no one wanted any more marching.
However, for Pedr and Pat to walk farther was out of the question. They
were both done to a turn, and fit to drop as it was. So they were put in
the canoe with the baggage, and it just held the load, and Pat (wily
man) annexed the baler, whilst Pedr took the paddles. They bestowed on
us one ample grin, and one of the beautiful smiles, and pushed off.
We three others had to tramp wearily round the margin of the lake to
Menesjärvi Town.
We started off across grassy swamp, and put up a pair of ptarmigan in
the first two dozen yards. The cock was a lovely fellow, splendid in his
summer plumage. He flew off at once; but the hen waited and glared. We
beat about a little to find the chickens; but we did not trouble very
much. We were wearily tired; and so we stumped on without seeing them.
We got out of the swamp soon, and walked through a dry,
straight-stemmed, pine forest, hung with that melancholy, lichenous
growth like the Spanish moss of the Gulf States which we had seen on the
trees near Ischinlisvuoni. But here it seemed younger, or else was
having less deadly effect, for the pines were few of them dead, and for
the most part in sturdy health. Crisp ivory-yellow reindeer moss made
the carpet on which we walked, and at times, through the tree aisles,
we caught sight of deer feeding.
* * * * *
It was a weary march that, for weary men, under the shade of those
gloomy pines, but we were buoyed up with thoughts of the entertainment
we should get at Menesjärvi, which the map marked as a town, or at least
a considerable village. And lo! when we did reach it, the place was
nothing more than the squalid huts of one small family.
But what they had, they offered with the usual easy courtesy. A couple
who were sleeping there turned out of their best room, the dairy, and we
were ushered in and invited to take the vacated couch. We did not do
this; we had had enough of insects of one kind and another that day; and
we thought the floor would be good enough for us. And so on the floor we
camped.
We dined first, sketchily. The room we were in was the dairy. Along
shelves on one side were a couple of rows of wooden-hooped bowls,
eighteen inches in diameter by four deep, in which milk of various dates
and various stages of decomposition was set to cream and curdle. From
time to time the good-wife came in from the farther room, and took up a
horn spoon which lay handy, and skimmed a part of one of the bowls into
a birch-wood piggin which she carried, and then licked the spoon clean
so as to be ready for next time.
Hayter said he quite granted that the lady of the house was very neat
and tidy in her habits, but he would not have any milk. I did. I ate a
bowlful of the clammy, sour curd. I was far too ravenous to be nice
about what I swallowed. And then we divided the contents of one of those
unsatisfactory tins between us. There was not a scrap of anything else
to be had for love, money, or blows.
Three times whilst this process was going on had we with torch and
fingers cleared the room of mosquitoes; three times had fresh swarms
arrived to take possession. The building was full of chinks; it was
impossible for us to stop them up; and so with pain (and some profanity)
we made up our minds to accept _kismet_, and let the enemy do their
worst. We crawled into our sleeping-sacks, and tried to doze.
Never was there a greater failure. The stinging little pests settled on
us in their hundreds, and sleep was out of the question. It was twelve
o'clock at night, and the sun outside, high in the heavens, was beating
on the shingle roof till the room within was like an oven. The air
reeked with sourness from the milk on the shelves, and we were tormented
with an unquenchable thirst as a result of our bites. Hayter, by the
way, was in a tidy fever.
We tried pulling the heavy blanket-sacks over our heads and getting off
to sleep that way. But the result inside was a choking Turkish bath, and
as the mosquitoes got in also, we did not get much profit that way. We
tried leaving our heads outside the sacks, and protecting them with hats
and veils, but that was a more dismal failure still. And finally we were
reduced to lying on our backs and keeping our faces in the midst of a
halo of pungent, stinging, ship's tobacco-smoke.
In the meanwhile we had not been left in our lonesomeness. Almost the
entire time we had one visitor or another staring as though we had been
strange and slightly amusing animals. It is a curious _trait_ of the
Lapps, that although in many simple ways they are a very polite people,
they will enter your room at any time without knocking or asking any
trace of permission, and will stare complacently at what is going on
without uttering so much as a word of comment.
A weird crew they were too, this audience at Menesjärvi, and it was hard
at times to persuade ourselves that we had not gone to sleep after all,
and that these were merely the people of fever and nightmare. They were
most of them deformed. One hump-backed girl, with pigeon breast and a
livid face, had a wedding ring on her finger and a couple of puny brats
at her heels. Intermarriage does dreadful work amongst some of these
isolated communities. Those who have been on Fair Island, that tiny
patch of land between the Orkneys and the Shetlands, where once an
Armada ship was wrecked, will have seen a grisly instance of this
nearer home.
The dogs alone were well-shapen and well-cared for. But then the Lapps
always are kind to their dogs, just as the Northern Finns are almost
invariably brutal.
[Illustration: Sketches at Menesjärvi]