Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/472

456 of every rock and stone as he passes from one to the other, while the stream shoots by. In favorable weather an angler may easily land a hundred-weight of trout and grayling in a day's sport, the fish running from half a pound to two pounds in weight. The flies sold by the London makers should be supplemented by some of a smaller size for bright weather and clear water; one with a body of yellow silk and grayish-brown wings is said to be very killing.

The distance from Jockmock to Quickjock, the two principal villages on the route, is about ninety miles, and is performed in three days. Each of these places has a church, a school, and a post-office, and Jockmock is said to have a shop, though we could not find it. They are really collections of small wooden huts, vacant during the summer months, but occupied in the long winter by the Lapps, who then come down from the mountains with their reindeer. Quickjock especially is in a delightful situation, facing a beautiful lake, and sheltered by mountains of noble outlines and grand proportions. At Jockmock there are some fine falls, not unlike the Rheinfalls at Schaffhausen, though in a very different setting. The resting-places or stations between these two villages are not inns in the usual sense of the word, but the houses of the Swedish settlers or immigrants into Lapland, one of which at each settlement is destined for the reception of the occasional guests.

These settlements consist of two or perhaps four houses, with the necessary out-buildings, and seem generally inhabited by the several members of the same family. Some of them have existed a considerable time, and are occupied now by the grandchildren or great grandchildren of the original settlers. Originally the Government granted free gifts of land, but they have now ceased to do this, and the number of the settlers does not appear to be receiving many additions from outside. The houses usually consist of two or more large rooms on the ground-floor with lofts above, and vast chimney-hearths in one corner, in which the logs of pine, some two or three feet in length, are piled upright when a fire is wanted; being lit, they burn up in a few minutes into a roaring' fire which gives out an intense heat. The family live chiefly in the kitchen, and this and the guest chamber are about twenty or thirty feet square, and furnished with a kind of sofa-bedstead which pulls out so as to afford a sleeping-accommodation of about five feet six inches by three feet. The kitchen itself is not over-clean, nor are the personal habits of the people without reproach in this respect; yet the guest-chamber, the linen, and the crockery, leave nothing to be desired.

The houses are surrounded by a small clearing, where the settlers cultivate for their own consumption sufficient oats and other grain, hay, and potatoes. They sow their corn in June, and so rapid is the growth under the influence of the lengthened days that they reap the harvest in six or seven weeks afterward, and sometimes get two crops