s covered with a mop of bright brown hair, his eyes were
dark blue and gleamed like polished steel, and the flushed crimson of
his face was set off by the strong bristles of a beard of three weeks
growth. There was something savage and ferocious in his air, as he sat
with his clenched fists planted upon his knees, and a heavy knife in a
wooden scabbard hanging from his belt. When our caravan arrived I
transferred him to my sketch-book. He gave me his name as Ole Olsen
Thore, and I found he was a character well known throughout the country.

Long Isaac proposed waiting until midnight, for moon-rise, as it was
already dark, and there was no track beyond Lippajarvi. This seemed
prudent, and we therefore, with the old woman's help, set about boiling
our meat, thawing bread, and making coffee. It was necessary to eat even
beyond what appetite demanded, on account of the long distances between
the stations. Drowsiness followed repletion, as a matter of course, and
they gave us a bed of skins in an inner-room. Here, however, some other
members of the family were gathered around the fire, and kept up an
incessant chattering, while a young married couple, who lay in one
corner, bestowed their endearments on each other, so that we had but
little benefit of our rest. At midnight all was ready, and we set out.
Long Isaac had engaged a guide, and procured fresh deer in place of
those which were fatigued. There was a thick fog, which the moon
scarcely brightened, but the temperature had risen to zero, and was as
mild as a May morning. For the first time in many days our beards did
not freeze.

We pursued our way in complete silence. Our little caravan, in single
file, presented a strange, shadowy, mysterious appearance as it followed
the winding path, dimly seen through the mist, first on this side and
then on that; not a sound being heard, except the crunching of one's own
pulk over the snow. My reindeer and myself seemed to be the only living
things, and we were pursuing the phantoms of other travellers and other
deer, who had long ago perished in the wilderness. It was impossible to
see more than a hundred yards; some short, stunted birches, in their
spectral coating of snow, grew along the low ridges of the deep, loose
snow, which separated the marshes, but nothing else interrupted the
monotony of the endless grey ocean, through which we went floundering,
apparently at haphazard. How our guides found the way was beyond my
compre