e
cold begets a necessity for fat, and with the necessity comes the
taste--a wise provision of Nature! The consciousness now dawned upon me
that I might be able to relish train-oil and tallow-candles before we
had done with Lapland.

I had tough work at each station to get my head out of my wrappings,
which were united with my beard and hair in one solid lump. The cold
increased instead of diminishing, and by the time we reached Gumboda, at
dusk, it was 40 deg. below zero. Here we found a company of Finns travelling
southward, who had engaged five horses, obliging us to wait a couple of
hours. We had already made forty miles, and were satisfied with our
performance, so we stopped for the night. When the thermometer was
brought in, the mercury was frozen, and on unmuffling I found the end of
my nose seared as if with a hot iron. The inn was capital; we had a warm
carpeted room, beds of clean, lavendered linen, and all civilised
appliances. In the evening we sat down to a Christmas dinner of
sausages, potatoes, pancakes, raspberry jam, and a bottle of Barclay
and Perkin's best porter, in which we drank the health of all dear
relatives and friends in the two hemispheres. And this was in West
Bothnia, where we had been told in Stockholm that we should starve! At
bedtime, Braisted took out the thermometer again, and soon brought it in
with the mercury frozen below all the numbers on the scale.

In the morning, the landlord came in and questioned us, in order to
satisfy his curiosity. He took us for Norwegians, and was quite
surprised to find out our real character. We had also been taken for
Finns, Russians and Danes, since leaving Stockholm. "I suppose you
intend to buy lumber?" said the landlord. "No," said I, "we travel
merely for the pleasure of it." "_Ja so-o-o!_" he exclaimed, in a tone
of the greatest surprise and incredulity. He asked if it was necessary
that we should travel in such cold weather, and seemed reluctant to let
us go. The mercury showed 25 deg. below zero when we started, but the sky
was cloudy, with a raw wind from the north-west. We did not feel the
same hard, griping cold as the day previous, but a more penetrating
chill. The same character of scenery continued, but with a more bleak
and barren aspect, and the population became more scanty. The cloudy sky
took away what little green there was in the fir-trees, and they gloomed
as black as Styx on either side of our road. The air was terribly raw
an