es. Far, far away, on the edge of the sky, a dull red glimmer
showed where he moved. Not the table-land of Pamir, in Thibet, the
cradle of the Oxus and the Indus, but this lower Lapland terrace, is
entitled to the designation of the "Roof of the World." We were on the
summit, creeping along her mountain rafters, and looking southward, off
her shelving eaves, to catch a glimpse of the light playing on her
majestic front. Here, for once, we seemed to look down on the horizon,
and I thought of Europe and the Tropics as lying below. Our journey
northward had been an ascent but now the world's steep sloped downward
before us into sunshine and warmer air. In ascending the Andes or the
Himalayas, you pass through all climates and belts of vegetation between
the Equator and the Pole, and so a journey due north, beyond the circle
of the sun, simply reverses the phenomenon, and impresses one like the
ascent of a mountain on the grandest possible scale.

In two hours from the time we left Eitajarvi we reached the Lapp
encampment. The herds of deer had been driven in from the woods, and
were clustered among the birch bushes around the tents. We had some
difficulty in getting our own deer past them, until the Lapps came to
our assistance. We made no halt, but pushed on, through deeper snows
than before, over the desolate plain. As far as Palajarvi we ran with
our gunwales below the snow-level, while the foremost pulks were
frequently swamped under the white waves that broke over them. We passed
through a picturesque gorge between two hills about 500 feet high, and
beyond it came upon wide lakes covered deep with snow, under which there
was a tolerable track, which the leading deer was able to find with his
feet. Beyond these lakes there was a ridge, which we had no sooner
crossed than a dismally grand prospect opened before us. We overlooked a
valley-basin, marked with belts of stunted birch, and stretching away
for several miles to the foot of a bleak snowy mountain, which I at once
recognised as Lippavara. After rounding its western point and turning
southward again, we were rejoiced with the sight of some fir trees, from
which the snow had been shaken, brightening even with their gloomy
green the white monotony of the Lapland wilderness. It was like a sudden
gleam of sunshine.

We reached Lippajarvi at twelve, having made twenty-eight miles of hard
travel in five hours. Here we stopped two hours to cook a meal and
change our dee