h snow, we pushed one
after another, against a small square door, hung at such a slant that it
closed of itself, and entered an ante-den used as a store-room. Another
similar door ushered us into the house, a rude, vaulted space, framed
with poles, sticks and reindeer hides, and covered compactly with earth,
except a narrow opening in the top to let out the smoke from a fire
kindled in the centre. Pieces of reindeer hide, dried flesh, bags of
fat, and other articles, hung from the frame and dangled against our
heads as we entered. The den was not more than five feet high by about
eight feet in diameter. The owner, a jolly, good-humoured Lapp, gave me
a low wooden stool, while his wife, with a pipe in her mouth, squatted
down on the hide which served for a bed and looked at me with amiable
curiosity. I contemplated them for a while with my eyes full of tears
(the smoke being very thick,) until finally both eyes and nose could
endure no more, and I sought the open air again.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] This was written in Lapland; and at the same time my friend Dr.
Elisha Kent Kane, of immortal memory, lay upon his death-bed, in Havana.
I retain the words, which I then supposed would meet his eye, that I may
add my own tribute of sorrow for the untimely death of one of the
truest, bravest, and noblest-hearted men I ever knew.

CHAPTER XII.

THE RETURN TO MUONIOVARA.

While at Kautokeino I completed my Lapp outfit by purchasing a scarlet
cap, stuffed with eider down, a pair of _boellinger_, or reindeer
leggings, and the _komager_, or broad, boat-shaped shoes, filled with
dry soft hay, and tightly bound around the ankles, which are worn by
everybody in Lapland. Attired in these garments, I made a very passable
Lapp, barring a few superfluous inches of stature, and at once realized
the prudence of conforming in one's costume to the native habits. After
the first feeling of awkwardness is over, nothing can be better adapted
to the Polar Winter than the Lapp dress. I walked about at first with
the sensation of having each foot in the middle of a large feather bed,
but my blood preserved its natural warmth even after sitting for hours
in an open pulk. The _boellinger_, fastened around the thighs by
drawing-strings of reindeer sinew, are so covered by the poesk that one
becomes, for all practical purposes, a biped reindeer, and may wallow in
the snow as much as he likes without the possibility of a particle
getting through his