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I had a little loophole between my cap and boa, but it was soon filled up with frost from my breath, and helped to keep in the warmth. The road was hard and smooth as marble. We had good horses, and leaving Avasaxa and the polar circle behind us, we sped down the solid bed of the Torneå to Niemis. On the second stage we began to freeze for want of food.
Our horses were tolerable, but we had eighteen miles to Pello, the next station, which we reached about ten o'clock. Our road was mostly upon the Torneå River, sometimes taking to the woods on either side, to cut off bends. The morn was hours in dawning, with the same splendid transitions of colour.
The room was so close and warm, and the dozen persons in it so alternately snoring and restless, that our rest was continually disturbed. We, therefore, rose early and aroused the lazy natives. The cold was still at 47° below zero. The roads were so much better, however, that we descended again to our own runners, and our lively horses trotted rapidly down the Torneå.
The four principal towns of West and North Bothnia are thus characterised in an old verse of Swedish doggerel: Umeå, the fine; Piteå, the needle-making; Luleå, the lazy; and in Torneå, everybody gets drunk. We took some refreshment, pushed on and reached Abyn between nine and ten o'clock, having travelled seventy miles since morning. The sleighing was superb.
On returning to the Doctor's we found a meal ready, with a capital salad of frozen salmon, bouillon, ale, and coffee. The family were reading the Swedish translation of "Dred" in the Aftonblad, and were interested in hearing some account of Mrs. Beecher Stowe. We had a most agreeable and interesting visit to these kind, simple-hearted people. I made a sunset sketch of Torneå.
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.
They brought us ale and Swedish punch, with reindeer cheese for our frozen noses, and insisted on having their horse put into the sled to take us over to Torneå and bring us back to dinner. The doctor's boy drove us, facing the wind with our faces exposed, at -42°, but one night's rest and good food enabled us to bear it without inconvenience.
We had but one between us, and the bereavement was not slight. Soon after leaving Haparanda, we passed a small white obelisk, with the words "Russian Frontier" upon it. The town of Torneå, across the frozen river, looked really imposing, with the sharp roof and tall spire of its old church rising above the line of low red buildings. Campbell, I remember, says,
When boats and dog trains failed him now, he muffled himself in wolfskins to his neck, flung a knapsack on his back, and set out in midwinter to tramp overland six hundred miles north to Tornea at the head of the Baltic, six hundred miles south from Tornea, through Finland to St. Petersburg. Snow fell continually. Storms raged in from the sea.
All that was required of them was that they should not recross a meridian when on their actual route of travel. A ship carried them from Tornea to Dantzic. Hence they passed to Berlin, and on through Frankfort, Stutgard, and Strasbourg, to Paris. Paris, it is true, was a little out of their way; but what Russian could travel across Europe without paying a visit to Paris?
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