to our bedrooms with coffee, and
make our fires while we get up and dress, coming and going during all
the various stages of the toilet, with the frankest unconsciousness of
impropriety? This is modesty in its healthy and natural development, not
in those morbid forms which suggest an imagination ever on the alert for
prurient images. Nothing has confirmed my impression of the virtue of
the Northern Swedes more than this fact, and I have rarely felt more
respect for woman or more faith in the inherent purity of her nature.

We had snug quarters in Haparanda, and our detention was therefore by no
means irksome. A large room, carpeted, protected from the outer cold by
double windows, and heated by an immense Russian stove, was allotted to
us. We had two beds, one of which became a broad sofa during the day, a
backgammon table, the ordinary appliances for washing, and, besides a
number of engravings on the walls, our window commanded a full view of
Tornea, and the ice-track across the river, where hundreds of persons
daily passed to and fro. The eastern window showed us the Arctic dawn,
growing and brightening through its wonderful gradations of color, for
four hours, when the pale orange sun appeared above the distant houses,
to slide along their roofs for two hours, and then dip again. We had
plentiful meals, consisting mostly of reindeer meat, with a sauce of
Swedish cranberries, potatoes, which had been frozen, but were still
palatable, salmon roes, soft bread in addition to the black shingles of
_fladbrod_, English porter, and excellent Umea beer. In fact, in no
country inn of the United States could we have been more comfortable.
For the best which the place afforded, during four days, with a small
provision for the journey, we paid about seven dollars.

The day before our departure, I endeavored to obtain some information
concerning the road to Lapland, but was disappointed. The landlord
ascertained that there were _skjuts_, or relays of post-horses, as far
as Muonioniska, 210 English miles, but beyond this I could only learn
that the people were all Finnish, spoke no Swedish, were miserably poor,
and could give us nothing to eat. I was told that a certain official
personage at the apothecary's shop spoke German, and hastened thither;
but the official, a dark-eyed, olive-faced Finn, could not understand my
first question. The people even seemed entirely ignorant of the
geography of the country beyond Upper Tornea, o