Fortune took it into her fickle head to smile on us at this halt. We got no less than two new carriers, and rare fellows they proved to be. They agreed after about an hour's palaver to take our packs upon their shoulders, and once more we started down the lake. The whole population were either on the beach, or came there to see us off. The eight ladies who were employed in the dissection of more fish, left off that employment for the moment, and stood up, and took of their head-kerchiefs and waved them diligently. And Margrete came down, and stood where the shingle was wet, and kissed her hand. Johann saw, and so moved was he that he must needs stand up on the top of the pile of packs to wave back, thereby very nearly upsetting the canoe and all of us. We got hold of his bandy legs and pulled him down, and he lay on the wet floor-boards with his head undermost, bawling with laughter, and thinking it the best joke in all the world.
He was hinting to another girl that he would die for her, at our next halt. He was a most fickle swain, this india-rubber Lapp.
We paddled eleven miles to the end of Muddusjärvi--or at least the Lapps paddled; we two foreigners lay against the packs, basking in the sun, and smoked, and lazed, and admired the colouring on the hills. And at the end of the lake we disembarked and paid off the melancholy Lapp from Enare, who took back the canoe. Poor fellow, he had had his troubles and we should have pitied him. Moreover, he was intelligent, and strong, and willing, and we should have appreciated all these qualities. But as it was, I am afraid our principal sentiment towards him was one of dislike. We had sufficient worries of our own for all practical purposes, and that mournful face hanging between us and the sun did not tend to lighten them.
The caravan limbered up and stepped out down an avenue thirty feet wide, cut from the forest to provide for the winter sleigh traffic. The stumps were still _in situ_; rocks and boulders were scattered about everywhere between the grim forest-walls. An unmeddled-with undergrowth lay breast-high all down the clearing. A tiny winding ribband of track gave us just space in which to set our feet as we marched; and even this led into quagmires and morasses, which we were forced to wade through or circumnavigate. But all these obstructions would be blotted out by the winter's snow, and the sleighs could travel briskly over the hard white crust. Scarcely a soul moved from place to place during the bright, soft, insect-ridden months of summer. Indeed this march was rendered memorable by our meeting another wayfarer. He was a man dressed in the Lapp clothes, but with a purely Tartar physiognomy, and he and we exchanged but the chilliest of salutations. Even the cheery Johann forbore to bestow on him his usual grin of greeting.