Now what we have got in mind is to do the same with Johann. The only thing necessary will be to teach him a working knowledge of English. We shall leave his personal habits severely alone; there is a surprisingness about them which is bound to be appreciated. And to alter his clothes (for general wear) would be to paint the lily.
John Henry Brown must have been at considerable pains to invent so picturesque a name as H’umaduya, but a name for our man comes glibly to hand. Prince Johann of Lapland could not well be improved on for such a purpose. Get him to London, spend a guinea on a Morning Post announcement of his arrival, and the thing would be done. Cards would rain in upon him, and people would scuffle with one another for the honour of getting him to their houses.
It is appetising to picture his behaviour. He would not be bashful in the very least: there is no shyness about Johann. And he would not be conventional: no, one could safely swear he would be quite the reverse of conventional. He might start a dinner seated on an orthodox chair, but if by any chance a bone came in his way, I am sure he would promptly retire to the hearth-rug and squat there cross-legged and gnaw it at his ease. Johann has a peculiar affection for bones. And after that he has fed, he will take a little tar from the bottle at his belt and anoint his face luxuriously, in view of a possible inroad of mosquitoes. Later on, if many people are admiring him excessively, and he feels very friendly disposed towards them, he will take off his boots and change the grass in them with care and deliberation. I can imagine the audience clasping their hands and saying, “How charmingly original it is of the dear prince to do such a thing!” I wonder, though, how they will stand it when he begins to scratch himself?
Afterwards I think we shall ship him across to Boston and New York. They love a prince there too, but they will not have him coloured. H’umaduya of the Gold Coast would not have gone down at any price in the States. The Americans have too many niggers at home to tolerate the bouquet d’Afrique otherwise than in the appartments specially appointed to contain its assertive flavour; but Prince Johann of Lapland would be a very different matter. Every paper in New York would publish a personal interview illustrated with his photographs six hours before he landed. His political relations with “Czar Nicholas” would be dished up spicily; and the “barbaric splendours of his princely court” would be written of with vivid (and a slightly indecent) realism by gentlemen of the press, who know to a headline what their public want.
But unless there is absolutely no other competition on the carpet, I am afraid that he would not have so long a reign in the States as he had in England. In my own, my native land, we like curiosities; in the States they prefer culture. Curiosities are a drug in the States, and a slightly impertinent drug at that. Culture is rare, and so they imitate and talk about it all day long.
Except for the absence of game, the country we were travelling through was much the same as the Thames valley must have appeared to those hairy, naked savages who first looked out upon the levels where London now stands. Here was a forest of fire-slain pines, still reared up gaunt and gray, defying heaven. Young birches and hazels were growing up round them. And then would come mile after mile, and mile after mile, of spongy morass, seamed by rivulets, and smeared by stagnant ponds. The Thames valley became of use to man, so man drained it, and penned all the streamlets into one orderly river, and created dry land out of the swamps. But it is hard to fancy that these great wildernesses so far within the Arctic Circle will ever be reclaimed by the ditcher for his master, the factory builder.
We met, though, with some traces of man’s handiwork, and man’s toil for his own convenience, as we journeyed on. We came upon a great circular morass, four miles in diameter. It was ringed in by a jagged paling of pines, and in the exact centre was a hummocky oasis of gray, lichened stone. Years before logs had been laid down over the worst parts of the swamp; they were crumbling and insecure, but they showed a distinct attempt at road-making; and over these we picked our way in easy peril of sprained ankles. But still there were many places where the logs had melted, and through these we had to wallow in the fashion which we had learned so very thoroughly. I think that this frail path accentuated the general desolation.
A few miles farther on we met with some more advanced engineering. We had seen the Tokkaharo River on the map, and had wondered much whether we could find a ford, or whether we should be forced once more to go through the operation of rafting. And here before us was a bridge, a veritable bridge. It was primitive, certainly, and it was not above suspicion of being rotten. It had two piers of crossed logs, and the roadway was formed by single trunks, over which one progressed with the dainty step of the rope-dancer.
It was on this bridge, I regret to say, that Johann belied the reputation we had made for him, and proved to be not so perfect an acrobat in practice as he was in personal appearance. He stopped before the airy structure and looked at it with a puckered face, and it was evident that he stepped out on it with a failing heart. He travelled along the first log all right till it began to sway under him, and then he got demoralised, and landed on the first pier spread-eagle fashion, being grabbed in the nick of time by Pat and Hayter. The middle span he did not attempt to walk, but sat a-cock-stride of it, and worked himself over with his hands. He suffered severely from splinters en route, and the workings of his face were so utterly funny that I regret to say the entire audience of four shouted with laughter during the whole of his passage. However he gained the second pier safely, picked a few of the more obvious splinters out of his person, and contemplated the farther bank. It was temptingly close. He stepped on to the end of the log, where it rested on the pier, and stood there for a full minute. He found the process quite easy; so he set out to walk along it. At the third step he stretched out his arms, balancing with them. The log was beginning to sway and buckle under his weight. At the fourth step he lost his head and his nerve, and made a rush for it. And then he lost his footing altogether, cannoned against the log with his haunch, grabbed at it with eager hands, missed, and went souse into ten feet of icy water in the Takkaharo below. A swirl of the stream put him on the bank, and he clambered out, and rolled on the green in an ecstasy of merriment over his own clumsiness.