That night I heard the weird and dismal howls of foxes. They sounded so strange in the stillness of darkness. In the morning I asked the Lapps how many kinds of foxes were found in the country. "There are red, blue, and black foxes," they answered. "During the Bear's Night or winter months the blue foxes and the gray hares turn white; the fur of the black fox is tipped with white, and he is known as the silver-gray fox, the fur thus tipped being very valuable. The ptarmigan also, a species of grouse, turns white during the Bear's Night."
I asked the Lapps, "Why do you call the winter months the 'Bear's Night'?"
"Because," one replied, "in this land the bears sleep all through the winter months."
"Goodness!" I exclaimed; "then the bear has a sleep that lasts five or six months, and even more?"
"Yes," the Lapp replied.
"Are there any bears here," I asked, "that are sleeping in the neighborhood?—for I should like immensely to stir one up."
"There are none this year," he replied.
Then I said to him, "Let us go fox hunting, for I should like to get some white and silver-gray fox-skins. We will build a snow house for our camp to shelter ourselves." One of the Lapps, called Jakob, agreed to go with me.
Besides hunting foxes, we were to trap ermines and kill white hares, for I wanted to have a rug of their skins. I remembered that I had slept between two rugs of white hare skins, and how beautiful, soft, and warm they were.
After this talk Jakob went off after reindeer, and returned with three of them. In a short time our preparations for camping were made. We took with us our sleeping-bags, some reindeer meat, a little salt, some hard bread, a coffee kettle, coffee, a small iron pot to cook our food in, two wooden shovels to help us in building a snow house and clearing the ground of snow, our skees, guns, and ammunition. I did not forget a couple of wax candles, for I always carried some with me, and plenty of matches, besides a steel and flints in case some accident should happen to our matches. We took also a few slender poles, upon which we intended to hang our meat to keep it out of reach of prowling carnivorous animals. These carefully packed and made secure in a special sleigh, we started. Our sleighs glided along as if they were going on smooth ice.