Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/205

Rh patches of green fields indicated the habitation of man.

When we came out of this beautiful Rafter Sund we saw regular Arctic scenery on all sides of us. A still cold sea, bleak rocks on all sides, snow and glacier resting on the rocks! We gazed and gazed on this wild characteristic scenery until it was past 10 The sun still lingered among the hill tops when we retired.

28th July. Early this morning we found ourselves in the harbour of the town called Tromso, and after breakfast we went on shore and walked along the Tromsodale (Tromso valley); we saw an encampment of Lapps and reindeer about two miles off. We were now in Norwegian Lapland, the region which was at one time almost entirely populated by the Lapps. The number of this strange people has however now gone down to only 30,000 i.e. about 18,000 in Norway and 12,000 in Sweden and Russia. When we reached their encampment we were much impressed with what we saw. The Lapps are a very short people scarcely over 5 feet in height, and men and women all clothe themselves in reindeer skins. We went into a Lapp tent built of birch barks and sods of grass, with a hole in the top for the admission of light, and to allow the smoke to escape. A kettle was boiling in the fire, and a couple of babies were sleeping in cradles. And such cradles! The poor babies were tightly encased and wrapped in skin cases of the shape of canoes, so that