ouble they were parted and made to go to their
respective herds. I noticed, as I went further south, that the twilight
was not so bright as it was in the North--for in that northern land, the
daylight comes from the direction of the pole.

The darkest part of the day or night was somewhat after eleven o'clock
P.M., but even then I could read, and as we travelled only Jupiter and
Venus looked at us--no other stars were visible, and towards half-past
one these two disappeared, for daylight was so strong; and when the
weather was clear after that time only the pale blue sky of the North
and its fleecy white clouds were to be seen above our heads. How
beautiful it was!

CHAPTER XXXVI

VARIABLE WEATHER.--SNOWY DAYS.--AN UNINHABITED HOUSE OF REFUGE.--ANIMALS
CHANGING THE COLOR OF THEIR FUR.--MIKEL TELLS ME ABOUT A
BEAR.--KILLING THE BEAR.--HURRYING ON OVER SOFT SNOW AND FROZEN
RIVERS.--THE ICE BEGINS TO BREAK.--PASS THE ARCTIC CIRCLE.

Onward we went, sleeping one day in the tent of a nomadic Lapp, another
day in our bags, at other times in the _gamme_ of a river Lapp. The
weather was very changeable; one day it was clear, the next day the sky
was gray. Snowy days were not uncommon.

Midway between Nordkyn and Haparanda the snow was of great depth. Only
the tops of the birch trees could be seen, and strange to say the
branches were in bloom, for the trees felt the heat of the sun, and the
snow had prevented the freezing of the ground to a great depth. The snow
must have been eight or ten feet deep in some regions.

When we reached the summit of the plateau, the watershed that divided
the rivers falling into the Arctic Sea and the Baltic, the weather was
very stormy. Though it was the 13th of May, we met a furious snowstorm.
This was dangerous for us, and Mikel attached my sleigh to his by a long
rope, so that we might not become separated. The snowstorm seemed,
however, to give new strength to the reindeer, and they went faster than
usual, and besides the cold weather we had had the two previous
days--the thermometer marking 15 to 18 degrees of frost--had evidently
invigorated them. For a while there was a lull in the storm, and we were
glad when we came to a house of refuge.

The house was small and uninhabited, but clean inside. Some food was
hanging from the ceiling, belonging to some Lapp or some wanderer like
ourselves, who had left it to have it on his return journey. The food
was sacred