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."
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 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 at this
time of the year 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 mantleshelf, 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 through its neck.
"There," said the boy, "I'll take that, and sell it to the Norse
farmer'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 where the reindeer find their grass in summer and 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, past a seater or
mountain meadow where the girls were pasturing their cows, much like
Lucy's friends in the Tyrol, then out upon the gray 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 of milk 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 tent of the Esquimaux. It is a wonder how
Lucy could go to sleep there, but she did, heartily wishing herself
somewhere else.