By way of baggage we had each of us a couple of tins of food, and though Hayter and I carried a tooth-brush each in addition, that was the end of our burdens. We were marching light, in the strictest sense of the word, and everything else that we possessed was left to the tender care of the other two carriers at the rest-hut. If we wished to drink, we must lift up fjeld water in the cup of our hands; when we slept, it must be à la belle étoile. No other methods are possible in the heart of Arctic Lapland.
In this irresponsible trim, then, we set off, and travelled for I cannot say exactly how long or how far. We had no watch to mark the time, nothing but the weariness of the legs to check the mileage. We slept when we felt inclined, we ate frugally when the emptiness of our insides refused any longer to be humbugged by draughts of water. I fancy we were two days at this game, though it might have lasted three, and if any one insisted on four, I would not stand out very firmly. When one is on the tramp like this, and tumbles off to rest, bone-weary, it is astonishingly hard to calculate how long sleep has endured. At any rate three out of the six tins had been emptied, and we were looking longingly at the survivors.
Then we came across an encampment of the deer-herders. It was the distant bark of a dog which first gave us advertisement of their neighbourhood. We were amongst a tangle of small hills, sparsely wooded, and richly carpeted with the ivory-yellow moss. We stopped and listened, holding our breath.
The deep-toned bark came to us again, carrying over the hills and through the scattered stems of the pines and the birches. Johann stretched out an arm and swept it slowly through a sextant of space. He brought it to a rest, and looked at each of us in turn. We nodded. Then we started off again down the direction he had pointed.
On the top of each rise we stretched out our necks expecting to see the deer-herd close beneath. There was nothing but the aching emptiness of the fjeld, and the dog’s bark was not repeated. Had we——
No, there was a reindeer, and another, and four more. And there were fifty grazing on the yellow side of that ravine, with two bulls fighting in the middle of them. And there was the bivouac down amongst that juniper scrub and those gray tumbled rocks beside the stream.
A watchful hound woke out of sleep, saw us, and gave tongue diligently. Some one out of sight whistled. A stunted woman bobbed up from a sky-line, and then a little bandy-legged man appeared on our flank, and came running up, shouting diligently.
Johann’s face up to this had been doubtful; he was by no means certain that he, a denizen of huts, would get a civil reception from the free nomad of the fjeld. But the sight of the bandy-legged man running, or the words that he shouted, seemed to drive away all unpleasant suspicions. Johann capered to meet him, guffawing with delight; and they shook hands limply and interchanged their views on the situation for at least ten minutes. Then the little bandy-legged man came up and smiled a welcome, shook hands limply with us also, and invited us to his residence.
By this time news had gone round, flying from mouth to mouth across the ridges of the fjeld, and there had arrived at the bivouac two small girls in leather breeches and trim matsoreos of skin, a wrinkled old woman, a half-grown boy, and Marie, the squat little person who had seen us first from the sky-line. We settled ourselves about upon the rocks and amongst the scented juniper bushes, and exchanged our news with vigorous pantomime.
A fire smouldered on a small hill of ashes in a handy open space. In the background stood the brown cloth-covered la-wo, a residence far more like the North American conical tee-pee than its nearer neighbour the Samoyede choom; and though it yielded up a thin smoke from the bristling sticks at its apex, to tell that the domestic hearth was lit inside, and all was ready for habitation, it was plainly impossible to pack so large a party under shelter of the sloping walls on a floor space which was only seven feet in diameter. And besides, the la-wo is not meant for a parlour; it is merely a shelter. Go all over the rest of the world, and the host will ask his guest to “come inside”; the wandering Arab will invite you to his black tent; even the Congo savage will ask one to enter his hut of reeds; but to the nomad Lapp this idea of a “home” has not yet come. He will offer his hospitality to the chance stranger; he may even be lavish so far as his starveling means admit; but he has no house-pride; the lee of a rock or the sunny side of a brae under Jove’s cold sky is the only snug corner or dining-place which it occurs to him is needed.