The reindeer feeds also on frogs, snakes, and even on the Lemming or Mountain Rat (Mus Lemmus), often pursuing the latter to so great a distance as not to find his way back again. This happened in several instances a few years ago, when these rats came down in immense numbers from the mountains.
The Pike pairs in this neighbourhood as soon as the river becomes open. I met with some strangers who had been six or eight miles, or more, to the north of Lycksele, and had resided there on a fishing party ever since Easter. I accompanied one of them to his hut. Each man had collected about twenty pounds of fish, which were drying.
It is certainly very unjust that these people, settled more than eight miles down the country on the other side of Lycksele church, should drive the native Laplanders
away, and be allowed to fish in these upper regions, which have no communication with the sea shore, and this without paying any tax to the crown or tithe to the curate of the parish, which the fishermen of the country are obliged either to do, or to farm the fishery of the land-holder, who pays tribute for his land, and who justly complains of the hardship he suffers in various respects, without daring to make any open resistance.
When any of these complaints were made by the Laplanders in my hearing, I asked why they did not seek redress in a proper manner.
"Alas!" replied they, "we have no means of procuring access to our sovereign. Nobody here exercises any authority to protect us, or to prevent these interlopers from doing with us just as they please. We cannot procure witnesses in our favour, scattered about as we are in an unfrequented desert, and therefore we are robbed with impunity. We can never believe that
this happens with the approbation of our Gracious Sovereign. If we were assured that it was his will, we should submit with dutiful resignation."
The clergy also complained to me that, after having resided in this wilderness, and fulfilled the duties of their calling with all possible care and diligence, they are never in the way of promotion, like those employed in schools, or any other station, where they are more at hand to solicit preferment. Indeed it seems very just, that, after having served here for twenty years, they should obtain some small preferment in a more cultivated country, where their children might be properly educated, and enjoy the advantages of civilized society.
A schoolmaster at this time resident here, who had exerted himself in the most exemplary manner, so as to do as much in two years as his predecessor had done in ten, with respect to teaching Swedish to the children of the Laplanders, a task harder than that of the plough, had no
other prospect than still to remain in obscurity, even his great merit not being likely to procure him any further advancement.