PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2390, 21 December 1899, Page 66

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

THROUGH ARCTIC LAPLAND. I have just dropped across a new book of the above title. The writer crossed from vVardo, which you will find in the North of Scandinavia, to the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, and the book describes the trip. The journey was anything but a pleasurable one, judging by the blush and mud the author and his friend had ..o iiade .through, the tormenting plugues ot ilies and mosquitoes they; had to face, and the

I insufficiency of food of anj' kind procurable •on the route. Carriers wore scarce, accommodation very primitive, and the .«un above the horizon all the timo increased their discomfort ; and taken any way, the tourists, while getting experience, certainly got but little fuii. As the- author writes I rather graphically, I'll reproduce in a con- .' densed form some of his descriptions. ' VABDO, THE FISHING TOWN, [is pictured something like this:— The smells ' of the place closed around us and took , possession. Bobbing about on the harbour swell were some 200 vessels of strange Norwegian rig, and almost all connected with the lMring trade. There is no ugriculluie j connected with the town ; there are no trees ' to make a timber business* po metals or

fuels to dig from the earth, no inducements to weave or carry on industries of a gentler clime. The sea is the only field which yields a Vardo man a harvest. Finns, Paissians, Norwegians, Samoyedes, Laps, bring their catch, in clumsy jots, and squaresailed viking boats, and the other weird unhandy craft of the Noi-th, and run in alongside the smelling warehouses ■which are built on piles at the water-side. The men and women of the town • gut the fish, and leave the entrails to rot m the streets or under the wharves, or in the harbour water ; and then the carcases are carried to the outskirts and hung on endless rack 0 , to shrivel and dry. and scent the air as thoroughly as the rains of the climate .vill permit. " At the corner posts hang posies of cods' heads to serve as fodder for the cows and goats during the winter, and these, too, help to amplify the stink. And from the mainland, beyond the fort, viien the breezes blow Varclowaids, there drift across more forceful stinks from the factory where they flense the Firmer whale* and cut up the pink beef for canned meats and fodder for the Arctic cow. In the harbour, steamers from France and Hamburg and lower Norway load bales of the dried cod, which will carry the aroma of Vardo as far as Bremen, Best, and St. Petersburg — rather a contiast in smells to the sweet-smelling fields of wild boronia in Western Australia.

Trade bristles in summer ; but when the lamps of winter begin to kindle — Vardo is' well within the Arctic circle, and so has a six months' night — the larger merchants take to the mail steamers and follow the sun south. Some merely retreat to Tromso, some to Bergen, some to St. Petersberg ; but there are others go to Italy and Southen Europe ; and there is one who washes the cod stink from him, dons the garb of fashion, and winter after winter hies him to a tiny principality on the .Riviera, where they keep a roulette table, which it is his mood to try to break.

The town must be very picturesque in appearance, for tlie houses are all colours fvom ochre to grey, and all sizes and all architecture . The older roofs are green with grass, and dotted with flowers of buttercup and clover. Coats feed on these roofs, and ladders lead up to them, so that the owners can pull off burning rafters in case of fc're. Such is a condensed description of what is one of the principal fishing towns of the world, and also one of the most northerly ; yev though well within the Arctic Circle' the tail of the Gulf Stream keeps' the harbour from freezing and makes the climate equable. It is never very hot and never very cold, and in this respect is a striking contrast with inland tracts much farther southward.

MOSQUITOES AND FLIES,

Cutclifi'e Hyne, the author of this book, made his overland trip in the summer, when Laps and Finns are averse to travelling, and reasonably so. Mr Hyne had at any rate a decided change. He and his companion had hardly got fairly on their journey before their faces were mottled in close patterns. The mosquitoes came in their milliard* — gaunt grey fellows, without one grain of fear for death. They get their trunks inserted in some unlucky pore, and t ijL-e»c-iibly their bodies, from the wing-socket batkwards, would grow into tiansparcnc scarlet blobs, and then fly away, crimson-bellied with blood they had no right to. Long bsfore the tourists had got across to the Gulf of Bothnia they could scarcely see from their eyes ; their hands were puffed out like boxing gloves ; their arms were swollen from wrist to elbow, so that they fitted tight in the coat sleeve ; they were bitlen bitten, bitten all over, through corduroy, under bootlaces, under hair. Tho scraps of paper in his pocket, says the author, were splodged with blood until they were unreadable.

Then, as if mosquitoes were not enough, there were dragon flies in millions, accompanied b;,' loathy great horse Hies as thick as a finger, and monstrous blu-jb «ttle.«. The last they could avoid, ar.d dragon flies passed harmlessly by. But tlie stealthy horse fly ! These beasts would fly up without a sound, and alight lilre a piece of thistle-down, and one would know nothing of the matter until he was bitten. They would go through a coat as e-i«ily as one would push in a pin ; even corduroy ridingbreeches would not impede them ; and on tlie place of each bite, ohere aro?e in the next half hour a great wen, which one wanted to tear out bedily by th<; fingernails. A fine holiday trip! To lessen the torture ,, the houses are filled with mosquitoproof smoke, <"nd bottles of brow Stockholm tar are canied to lavishly anoint e:cposed parts.

BYE-BREAD EATING

was another experience, described something hk3 this: "With regard to that brown rye-bread of Lapland, !I brought a piece home, wlrch my dog saw and annexed. He is a fox terrier oi lussty appetite, and he tried to eat it. He worried it for a whole afternoon, and finally left it on the gra-s very little tho worse for the experience. I did better. I was .sick with hunger, and devoured two great blabs of the caky, and with it a hindful of stinking fish. Then the process of manufartuie is gone into. The grain from which Ihe&e cakes are baked grows with little tending. It is sown, and suffered to come up as weather and weeds permit. When it is as near ripe as it choos.es to get, it is reaped, and with the husks, the bran, a larger part of the stalk, and a fair percentage of the companionable weed, it is chopped into meal. It is more hay and bran than anything eke. Baking days come seldom, and a large supply is made at once. The dough is pawed out into discs a foot In diameter, and about three-quarters of an inch thick. Each d ; sc has a hole in the middle, and when baked, the cakes are strung on a .stick and hung up on the rafters for u:-e as lequued. Age neither softens nor hardens their texture ; yeais could not deteriorate them. There ;.re two varieties of these delectable cakes. One sort was like indiarubber. and on this we could make no impression whatever. But with the other kind, which was of the consistency of concrete, we could, as a rule, get on quite well, if we were given time, it was more or lesr- flavourless, unless it had been packed with stale fish ; and it was not stuff to hurry over. It was not

strengthening either, as the system could assimilate but little of it. The bread of Arctic Lapland carries the palm for general unsatisfactoriness ; but there is no denying the fact that it fills the stomach, and for that purpose we employed it ravenously. There is no ache so bitter as that of an empty stomach.

Milk is one of the Lap's mainstays of life. It is thick and syrupy, almost as dense as condensed Swiss milk, and is taken at every meal. It is carried in grimy bladders, and, after the custom of the country, is usually rather sour. At meal-times it is poured into a large bowl of birch-root, which the host holds between his knees. There is one spoon, a shallow affair of bone, which is handed from one to another, and it is always considered polite to lick the spoon quite clean before passing it on. The milk itself, either by reason of its surroundings, or because it is made that way, has a telling flavour of ancient turpentine which clings in the memory. It might be mentioned that the dairy is generally a bedroom also. There is a reason for preferring the milk curdled, at least pretty frequently. A constant diet of fresh milk so rich would entail constant biliousness ; milk curdled, or slightly acid butter-milk, is much more wholesome. But why always curdled? And why with so much fresh fish in sea and lake cat " semi-dried relics reeking of decay " ? Iteindeer and cow meat are dried and eaten half rotten also. A Lap's diet of half-rotten fish and mean, villainouslysmelling curdled milk and indigestible ryebread either as hard as concrete or as tough as indiarubber is certainly not very appetising. Now, I haven't given you all I would like to from this book— l should like, for instance, to describe the reindeer fully ; but you will see it is an interesting one. Most of it is taken yip with the inland Laps and Finns. As the writer approached tlie Gulf of Bothnia, things brightened up and got a little more civilised. I think, however, if he were promised another trip of the same sorb, he would decline with thank?. I haven't put any of the macter within quotation marks because, while largely using the author's words, I have done \a, lot of omitting and sj>iicing. I had intended lay next cliat to be on the results of the election ; but judging you by myself, I shall postpone that, for 1 don't want politics to spoil my Christmas enjoyment or digestion. Instead of politics, I may, as a kind of continuation of to-day's chat, give v;ou a, little of "Throinjh Finland in Carts," by Mrs Alec Tweedie. _ As she traversed Finland in other directions, and saw the country and its people through different coloured spectacles, it will be interesting to compare the points of view of the two writers. And now it is my good fortune to be again able to wish you the Compliments of the Season. My younger readers, many of them at any rate, will now be enjoying their six weeks' holiday. I dare say that ■they wouldn't mind being on the school lolls of Finland during the midsummer ; for there it is never dark in summer, and schools get 12 weeks' holiday. Wouldn't that be joyful, especially with the addition of wild straw and other berries, procurable everywhere. Again I wish you all a merry time ; and may your pleasure and mine be heightened by British victories in the Transvaal and prospects of a speedy and favourable termination to the war.