Then we saw houses of red and gray and ochre standing on a low bluff, and we made for them, ran down sail, and put the boat's nose on a beach of sand. We had arrived at Enare Town, the chief city of the Lapps, and it was three o'clock in the morning. We were deadly tired. The rest-house lay at the top of the bluff, and we climbed to it with yawns and drooping eyelids. There are no locks in Lapland, and we went inside and announced ourselves. A young Lapp and his wife were asleep in the guest-room bed, under a calico mosquito bar. They rose, silent and blinking, and began to clear away their bedding. In a cradle lay a child with its face all blotched with bites, and this also they took away. But what other preparations they made then for our comfort I do not know. We lay down on the floor in our oilskins as we were, and dropped off on the instant into the deadest of sleep.
Up there in the North, where the day lasts bright all round the clock, they set down no arbitrary hours for work and sleep such as are forced upon us here in England. One may often see children winding up their play at 4 A.M., or their elders starting a day's work at six in the afternoon. In our journey which followed, across this country down towards the Arctic Circle, we marched quite as frequently by night as by day. On that special occasion at Enare we breakfasted at twelve midday, and found most of the town outside to welcome us.
We held a levee inside first, because Olof had advertised the wonders of Hayter's Marlin rifle, and the bear-hunting section of Enare (which comprised all the males) could not rest till they understood all about the repeating mechanism. And then we went to present a letter to Herr Praest Hinkola. It turned out that he was away, and was not expected home for some days, but Fru Hinkola and her brother, the postmaster, took us in charge, and strangers in a strange land were never more hospitably entreated. We had all our meals at their table, and if we did not sleep under the parsonage roof, it was only through our own refusal to trespass farther on their kindness.
They were not cheering, however, about our chances of getting through across the country to Kittila. It was never done in summer; there were no roads; the mosquitoes and the swamps were almost impassable; horses or reindeer were utterly out of the question; lakes and rivers lay in the way, over which it was very doubtful if we should find ferriage even for ourselves; and, finally, it was distinctly improbable that we could get carriers to pack our goods beyond the first stage or two. In winter the route was practicable enough, for then the river and the lakes were frozen, and the swamps were covered in snow, and a sledge with relays of deer could get over the ground with ease. But even in winter that way was little traversed. It was from Helsingfors and Uleaborg they got the supplies, and the route to those towns lay through Sodankyla. That was quite practicable even in summer, though of course not for horses or reindeer. We could travel by canoe nearly all the way.