For many days the land was illuminated for a while every night by the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights. Sometimes the aurora seemed to imitate the waves of the sea and moved like big heavy swells, changing colors, bluish, white, violet, green, orange. These colors seemed to blend together. Then the heaving mass would become gradually intensely red. This red mass broke into fragments which scattered themselves all over the blue sky. It gave its reflection to the snow. It was the end of the aurora or electric storm. They were never twice alike; they varied in forms and colors. The auroras are like everything in creation: on our earth there not two men or women exactly alike, there are not two leaves alike, two blades of grass, two trees, two stones alike, neither two waves, for the sea is ever changing in its ripples.
CHAPTER XII
The Snow Getting Deeper.—Lapp Hospitality.—A Lapp Repast.—Coffee and Tobacco Lapp Staples.—Babies in Strange Cradles.—How the Tents are Made.—Going to Sleep with the Mercury at 39° Below.
WHEN I had left Pajala I travelled on the frozen Muonio, passed the stations of Kaunisvaara, Killangi, and Parkajoki, and came to Muonioniska. All the hamlets or farms had comfortable log buildings. Some of the dwelling-houses were quite large. Wood was not lacking and the houses were quite warm. Forests of the fir were abundant.
The sun was now hidden below the horizon. The snow was getting deeper every hour—and was about seven or eight feet deep on a level after being packed. I was coming to another great "Snow Land." From Muonioniska I travelled on between the Muonio and Ouanasjoki rivers. (Joki means river in Finnish.) I became acquainted with many nomadic Lapps who wandered with their reindeer over that great snow land—among them were two very pleasant men of the name of Pinta and Wasara, who agreed to travel with me for a while.
Wasara, the younger, was the son of a very rich Lapp who owned nearly ten thousand reindeer, and possessed besides a good bank account.
Pinta was poor, the possessor of only about one hundred reindeer, which pastured with those of his elder brother. Pinta was about thirty years old; Wasara about twenty-five. Both were men of splendid physique; broad shouldered with very muscular legs and arms, which were apparently as hard as wood. They had blue eyes and fair hair. One was four feet eight inches and a half in height, the other was four feet ten inches. They were very skilful on skees; in summer they could make tremendous leaps over rivers and ditches with the long poles they carried with them, and could drive the most intractable reindeer, which are even worse than our broncos.
While travelling, I drove next to the leader, for reindeer follow each other mechanically in the same furrow. The leader is the one that has the most work; but if he follows a furrow, his reindeer gives him little trouble.