The man who received us was the Squire of Küstula, and a great man indeed. He was a Finn, and yet he was civil and kindly. He set before us for our entertainment a great bowl of curdled milk, and trotted about bare-footed beside us, and besought us to eat. But we were a bit too knocked up to have much appetite then, and we got on to the beds; whereupon he produced a second mosquito-bar, rigged it, and left us. Imagine the unspeakable luxury of it! sleep! on a real bed made of boards and mattressed with hay; and without either fleas or ticks or mosquitoes to bite one into wakefulness. We revelled there in sleep for three solid hours.
The noise of the housework roused us, and we got up, very swollen and stiff from the bites. The tub of curdled milk was on the table, and we ate it thirstily. The Squire heard us moving, and paddled in on his bare feet, and grinned affably. His name by the way was Johann Sanmelli Myal, but we called him Squire from the first, as that name seemed to suit him best.
We mentioned that we wanted a canoe and men to take us to Kittila, and he said he had guessed it already, and we could set off whenever we chose. Here was thoughtfulness and civility! It seemed marvellous to find such qualities and such a house within a day's march of that dreadful, listless savage at Scurujärvi.
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry were hanging about waiting to be paid, and we gave them what we had bargained for with the feckless one, and a _douceur_ over for themselves, and then we went out and strolled about in the open air.
The settlement was very different from any we had seen before, and I only hope for the sake of the civil people who live there, that it was as prosperous as it looked. Viewed from a distance, so that one could not tell whether the green crops were rye and barley, or lanky maize, it might have been a settlement in North Carolina or the Western States, except for one thing--there was no litter about. There were none of those heaps of disused meat, and yeast, and tomato tins, so inseparable from new American civilisation. All was trim.
There were a few Lapps about the place it is true, but they were merely in Küstula as dependants. Not one owned a farm. The people of Küstula, however, had dealings with the aboriginal in another way. For all winter traction and transport they used reindeer, but when we visited the village there was not a single one within its boundaries. Each farmer had an agreement with a Lapp, and sent away his ear-marked deer to be pastured under the Lapp's charge on the distant uplands of the fjeld and tundra.