If all Arctic Lapland were like this slip of territory between Pokka and Scurujärvi, it would be worth the visits of lovers of beauty. The long tree-aisles bedecked with every shade from banana green to black, and peopled with the moving forms of deer, the green and silver of the birches with the living lace-work shadows, the glorious heaven above, and the ivory-yellow moss beneath, made up a marvel of colour and form which we told ourselves it would be hard to equal in a more Southern land. But it must be confessed that such oases of comeliness were rare; and perhaps from contrast with the aching wildernesses in which they were set, we were slightly apt to over-estimate their beauty.
There was some indication of a trail, too, nearly all the way. We would come upon a swamp, and see a broken path of logs winding across it like some long, gray snake, which disappeared here and there in the grass. Very good ankle-traps these log-tracks were too, for they were all shockingly rotten, and would turn sometimes almost before one trod on them. Nobody was interested in keeping them up, and one wondered why they had ever been put down. There is no summer traffic between the scattered farms of Arctic Lapland.
At one place we sat down for a halt in a broad savanna of grass, which must have been a dozen miles in circumference. There was not a bird to be seen, and, for once, there were comparatively few mosquitoes. But instead there were millions of dragon-flies, artificial-looking insects, which irresistibly reminded one of tin and clockwork mechanisms from the Lowther Arcade.
It was here, I remember, that the Lapps gave us a fine example of their fastidiousness about drink. The prairie was pitted with ponds and seamed with rivulets, and Hayter and I quenched our thirst from the stream which was nearest to our bivouac. Johann went and sampled it carefully, and then spat the water from his lips. It was not sufficiently cold for his taste. He went on farther and tried again, and farther and tried again, and still farther and farther, sampling and spitting. He was very tired, very foot-sore, and very thirsty; he was absolutely without the most elementary niceness in his food requirements, but in this matter of drink he did not mind how much trouble he spent so that he got his water icily cold. He spent an hour searching for a suitable tap, and when he had got it, consumed just one half-pint. And then Pat, who had been to much engaged in scratching himself to take part in the hunt, went off to share in its fruits.