United States or United Arab Emirates ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Turn homeward and live," said the wise man. The king only answered by asking the wise Lapp if he would be their guide to the Fire Island. He consented and went aboard the ship. His name was Varrak. He steered the boat due north for thirty days and thirty nights. The first danger they met was a great whirlpool, whose center was a vast hole into which had been drawn many a brave ship.
But she heard it well enough: "You don't want to buy any hares, maybe?" There was no mistaking what he had said. The Lapp himself might have spoken innocently enough; some one had told him, perhaps. Or he might have meant it ill. Be that as it may, Inger took it as a warning a message of what was to come.... The days went on.
I peeped through, and there was Bonaventure de Lapp standing inside the keep, and peeping out through the very hole at which I had seen his face. He was turned half away from me, and it was clear that he had not seen me at all, for he was staring with all his eyes over in the direction of West Inch.
His father was living, and was about ninety years old. The outdoor life agrees with the Lapp. Give me the plateaus of the Arctic regions for health. There are plenty of mosquitoes in summer, but no malaria at any time. Nor is there any sore throat there. I do not remember, indeed, ever to have heard a person cough in that country.
"Well, then, the devil take you, and you may do what you like!" he cried, in one of his sudden flushes of anger. Without a word of farewell to either of us, he turned off upon the track that led up towards his father's house. Bonaventure de Lapp smiled at me as we walked on together. "I didn't thought he liked me very much," said he.
Some food was hanging from the ceiling, belonging to some Lapp or some wanderer like ourselves, who had left it to have it on his return journey. The food was sacred and safe. No one would have dared to touch it, no matter how hungry he was, for it did not belong to him, and the one who had left it perhaps depended upon it to sustain his life on his return.
To-day these people are law-abiding and peaceable, but they are a strange mixture of good and bad. They are kind and hospitable, and of a cheerful disposition; at the same time they can be cruel, cunning, and selfish, while their love of money is no less than their love of drink when they can obtain it. For one thing only does the Mountain Lapp live his herd of reindeer.
After taking our frugal meal of hard bread and butter, my Lapp said to me, 'To-morrow we shall see the bear; it is late in the season, and I am sure that he is looking for his winter quarters in the neighborhood, and at the first indication of a big snowstorm he will make ready for his long sleep, for the bears know when a snowstorm is coming. "'How can they know? I inquired.
I always travelled with a good stock of that grass, twisted and knotted together in small bundles. Then I looked at myself in the looking-glass, and for the first time saw how I appeared in my new outfit, my Lapp costume.
"The girl stayed with the boy for the rest of her life, and never again did she long for the valleys. And you, Osa, if you were to stay with us only a month, you could never again part from us." With these words, Aslak, the Lapp boy, finished his story. Just then his father, Ola Serka, took the pipe from his mouth and rose.
Word Of The Day