Then I bought a square Lapp cap, the top filled with eider down. The rim could be turned down to protect the ears and the forehead.
After procuring my Lapp outfit, I thought I would try to dress myself in my new garments. The friend who accompanied me said: "I will show you how to prepare your feet before you put your shoes on. One can never be too careful, otherwise the feet are sure to be cold on a journey."
I put on my two new pairs of hand-knitted stockings. He surrounded my feet over the stockings with Lapp grass; then he put my shoe on most carefully, with the lower part of the trousers inside, and then wound the bands not too tight round my ankle, saying, "Now your feet will be warm all day even if you spend all your time on skees. You see how careful I have been in putting on your shoes. Dressed as you are you can defy the cold. If you follow the advice I have given you, you will never have cold feet no matter how long you drive or walk in the snow. But take great care that neither shoes, nor stockings, nor grass be damp. I think it will be well for you to let a Lapp or a Finn put your shoes on before you start on a long journey—until you can do it yourself quite well."
The "shoe grass" of which I have spoken grows in the Arctic regions in pools in the summer. It is gathered in great quantity by the Laplanders and Finlanders, who dry it and keep it carefully, for it is indispensable in winter in their land of snow and cold. It has the peculiarity of retaining heat and keeping the feet warm and absorbing the moisture. I always travelled with a good stock of that grass, twisted and knotted together in small bundles.
Then I looked at myself in the looking-glass, and for the first time saw how I appeared in my new outfit, my Lapp costume. The frontispiece will show you exactly how I was dressed (without a hood), for it is from a photograph. Unfortunately, being a bachelor, I don't know how to take care of things, and my costume, gloves, stockings, and mittens have been eaten up by moths, and I have had to throw them away. But I appeared before the American Geographical Society in New York dressed in this suit, seated in my Lapp sleigh, with a stuffed reindeer harnessed to it, and my bearskin over me.
To complete my outfit I added two large reindeer-skin bags, one larger, so that the smaller one could be put inside it without much difficulty. I was to sleep in these bags when obliged to rest out doors on the snow. One bag was sufficient in ordinary cold weather—say 15 or 20 degrees below zero; the other I would use when the thermometer ranged from 25 to 40 or 50 degrees below zero.
CHAPTER V
What the Arctic Circle is.—Description of the Phenomenon of the Long Night.—Reasons for its Existence.—The Ecliptic and the Equinoxes.—Length of the Long Night at Different Places.