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I looked sharp for the Palajok Elv, the high fir-fringed banks of which I remembered, for they denoted our approach to the Muonio; but it was long, long before we descended from the marshes upon the winding road of snow-covered ice. In vain I shifted my aching legs and worked my benumbed hands, looking out ahead for the embouchure of the river.
He then donned a reindeer of pösk, leggings and boots, and we started again. It was nearly five o'clock, and superb moonlight. This time they mounted our sleds upon their own sledges, so that we rode much higher than usual. Our way lay up the Muonio River: the track was entirely snowed up, and we had to break a new one, guided by the fir-trees stuck in the ice.
I judged at last that the horses had been baited sufficiently, silently showed my watch to the postilions, who, with ourselves, got up and went away without a word having been said to mar the quaint drollery of the incident. While at Haparanda, we had been recommended to stop at Kingis Bruk, at the junction of the Torneå and Muonio.
Still on, ploughing through deep seas in the gathering darkness, over marshy plains, all with a slant southward, draining into the Muonio, until we reached the birchen ridge of Suontajärvi, with its beautiful firs rising here and there, silent and immovable. Even the trees have no voices in the North, let the wind blow as it will.
We took a fresh start, I narrowly missing another overturn, as we descended the slope below the house, but on reaching the level of the Muonio, I found no difficulty in keeping my balance, and began to enjoy the exercise. My deer struck out, passed the others, and soon I was alone on the track.
Our road all day was upon the Muonio River, the main branch of the Torneå, and the boundary between Sweden and Russia, above the junction. There had been a violent wind during the night, and the track was completely filled up.
From Rukojarvi I had followed the highroad, passed the post stations of Korpilombolo with its church, Sattajarvi, and came to the hamlet of Pajala, in latitude 67° 10'. The hamlet is situated near the junction of the Torne river with the Muonio, and had a church.
The village, separated from the Northern Ocean, by the barren, uninhabited ranges of the Kiölen Mountains, and from the Finnish settlements on the Muonio by the swampy table-lands we had traversed, is one of the wildest and most forlorn places in all Lapland.
From Muonioniska I travelled on between the Muonio and Ouanasjoki rivers. Wasara, the younger, was the son of a very rich Lapp who owned nearly ten thousand reindeer, and possessed besides a good bank account. Pinta was poor, the possessor of only about one hundred reindeer, which pastured with those of his elder brother. Pinta was about thirty years old; Wasara about twenty-five.
So now we had to go westward, and after two days' travelling we came to the river Muonio, to a Finnish hamlet called Kuttainen, not far from Karesuando. Now travelling became really dangerous. The frozen river was full of treacherous cracks, and others were appearing all the time.
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