Through Arctic Lapland

by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

This was unsatisfactory. We had come to see Arctic Lapland, certainly, but it looked as if we were going to inspect a good deal more than we had bargained for. A real solid hunger made us appreciate this very thoroughly.

We asked Johann if he had any suggestion to make. He scratched himself thoroughly for ten minutes and gave the matter his due consideration. Finally he said he thought he could lead us back successfully to the places from which we had come.

We did not see the force of this at all. We intended to get through to the other side of the country, and we stated the proposition with brevity and decision.

But Johann’s suggestion found other ready hearers. Pat and Pedr both woke into animation. It appeared that Pat had a sore heel, and possessed a wife (or somebody else’s wife) he wanted to return to, and also remembered some important business on Mattosjärvi which ought to be attended to at once. And Pedr, the beautiful Pedr, but without the beautiful smile, stated tersely that he was sick of the whole thing, and intended to go back home there and then.

It was mutiny. They leaned back each against his pack, and began making fast the thongs against their breasts and shoulders. They were frightened, and they were tired, and they were going back to the place from which they had come whether we liked it or whether we did not. It was glaring, flagrant mutiny, and there was only one way to deal with it, and we chose that way.

It was a primitive style of persuasion, and it involved the use of the heavy British hand and the heavy British boot, but it served its purpose then, as it has done thousands of times before; and after the proceedings were over, we stood still a minute to collect breath, and contemplated three very sulky, subdued carriers, squatted on the ground and waiting for orders.

The outlook was not cheerful. The only thing apparently left was to make for Ivalomati on a compass course, which sounds simple enough on paper, but was likely to prove a very different matter in practice. We had carefully checked all our travel up to this on the map, and so far we had never detected the map’s accuracy in any one single point. It was a map somewhat reminiscent of those made by boys at school, where one filled in any invitingly bare space with an imaginary river, or a fancy lake, or a decorative range of caterpillar mountains. From an artistic point of view this kind of fiction is very pleasant to look upon and to create, and indeed exercises a wonderful fascination over some people. One remembers the joy poor Stevenson confessed to over the making of that delicious map in Treasure Island. But when you are depending on a geographer to lead you out of famine, and when a fictitious scratch of his pen may hustle you into actual starvation, why then you come upon very different views, and cordially agree that any one who writes or draws anything but the bare and naked truth should be led out to suffer a lingering death.

In addition to all this, we could only guess at our “point of departure,” and so getting the true magnetic bearing of this problematical Ivalomati was a matter of the airiest uncertainty. However, it was Hobson’s choice, and so putting on cheerful, confident faces for the benefit of the frightened, sulky carriers, off we set.

Now this sort of quandary no doubt sounds funny enough from the distance; but viewed at first hand, we failed to catch its humour. We had hunger nipping us in the ribs all the time; we were heavy-footed with weariness; the infernal insect-plague was going on all the time; and there was nothing to tell us whether we were steering right, or wandering completely away into the savage depths of the wilderness.

We met swamps, and plunged across them in curves and zigzags. We tramped through forests of graceful birches, and forests of dreary pines; we clambered over rocks, and waded streams. The land was not entirely desolate of life. Sometimes we saw tiny lemmings before our feet, and once we heard the cry of a cuckoo from far away amongst the trees. At one halt in the middle of a two-mile-wide tremulous morass, we sat beside a pond of clear water, and tried to divert ourselves by overlooking the business of three black-and-gray frogs who dwelt in its depths. We were thankful to those speckled frogs during that halt: they almost interested us. But the greater part of the way was dreary enough. And so we expended an entire day’s journey.