Up to this point the ground had been slowly rising all the way, and the air was growing cooler. As we went on, the swamp grew more rare. The water collected in little lakes, and under foot we trod for the most part on rock pavements worn smooth by a thousand centuries of water and weather. There were fewer birches, but here and there an abortive pine twisted and squirmed some five or a dozen feet above the naked stone, to hint at the vast forests of his giant fellows which lay only a few hundred miles to the southward. And underfoot, between the outcrops of rock, were here and there patches of ivory-yellow reindeer moss.
But when we reached the divide, and looked down over the country on the southern side, the reindeer moss had taken full possession. The pale sulphur tint was everywhere, but still the fjeld was deserted. There was not a deer in sight. All that rich lichenous growth was left to run to waste. Only one living animal did we see on the whole day's march, and that was a tiny black-and-tan lemming, which I caught in my hand and (to his surprise) let go again. The country round here is, however, used largely as a camping-ground by Lapps during the winter, and the yellow moss, though crumbling and dry as sand, feeds the deer till they are rolling with fat. It is a very deep snowfall or a very hard frost which makes these pastures inaccessible. In winter the deer break the snow-crust with their great splayed fore-hoofs, and then dig down like terriers, till they are often browsing at the foot of a pit which completely hides them from any one on the surface.
For cold weather the migrating fjeld-Lapp comes to more permanent moorings, and sets up for himself a domicile more suited to the climate than his flimsy conical tent. We came across one of these on this day's march, in the forks of a growing river. It was a hut of peat and sods, shaped like a West Greenlander's igloo, and some dozen feet in diameter. Birch-stems were used inside to support the roof and prop out the walls, but these were falling in. One well-cleaned rib-bone and some charred embers were all that remained of furniture. The herdsman Lapp does not build for futurity; it is a concession to his principles when he builds at all; and when he quits his turf mansion in the spring, he does not look to find it still standing in autumn. He is content to waste a day and build another.