Ant-hills, built of pine-needles and clay, perched under the trees on the steep hillside, with gallery entrances into them of the bigness of peas, and a marvellous insect busyness pervading all their neighbourhood. They were not so large as those pine-needle ant-hills one meets with in north-western Norway, and of course were dwarfed by the huge ant-mounds of Africa, but they ran to a goodly size here in the Enare district, often reaching to a four-foot height above a seven-foot base.
We had passed the noisy falls by this time, and when we could catch sight of it through the trees, we could make out that the farther side of the valley was moving away from us. We were working downwards all the time, and presently we stepped out from the cover and stood on the sand beaches of Muddusjärvi.
It was necessary to cross this lake before we could get any farther, and the packs were thrown down, and we proceeded to telegraph our need to a tiny farm on the other side. The Finn did not help. He was driven half mad with the mosquitoes, and he lay on the sand, with his head wrapped in his coat, writhing with the irritation of his bites. But we others dragged some dead wood to the extreme water's edge, and shredded it with our sheath-knives, and set it alight, and coaxed it into a goodly flame. And then we added more fuel, and still more. There is always plenty of dead wood ready to hand in these austere forests, which no one but Nature herself cuts or cares for, and we dragged down whole trees to dedicate them to the flames.
The lake was dim with mist, and a clear signal was imperative; and Johann, the eccentric, must needs climb trees and dance upon dead branches, crooning music to himself, till he and the branch came crashing down to the ground. He was a weird creature. So we made this beacon of ours no niggling flicker. We had got to make our presence known and our needs understood; so we built us a royal blaze which roared, and writhed, and rose high into heaven; and then we ranged ourselves in the valley of smoke which drifted to leeward (to keep out of the mosquitoes' reach), and one by one stepped out and hailed at the upmost stretch of our voices, that some one, we did not know who, might bring across a boat.