Tih 
ROM the confined valley bottoms with their luxuriant 
growth of forest, we mount up along the ‘river- 
rapids; the slopes form in many places long 
terraces, one after another, remains of the dam- 
mings up of the water while ice-bound, monoton- 
ous in their appearance, and sterile in their nature. The forest 
becomes rapidly thinner, and is succeeded by scrub, and we 
shortly stand up on the wide plateau, which with inconsiderable 
interruptions of mountains or valleys, stretches over large por- 
tions of the interior of Finmarken. Upon these large moors, 
upon ‘‘ Lapland” proper, the solitary Laplanders drive their 
herds of Reindeer from tract to tract, to seek the places where the 
Reindeers’ chief food and staff of life—the Reindeer Moss (Cladonia 
vangifeyina)—grows most luxuriantly; but of fixed residents there 
are found in these regions but few. 
Innumerable lakes, most frequently surrounded by extensive 
stretches of bog, which are covered with dwarf-birch or willow- 
scrub, le spread out upon the plateau, and are the true summer 
home of many of our northern species of ducks and waders. 
By many of the small brooks, which purl out into the large 
rivers or the lakes, we shall thus find established the pretty 
Lesser White-fronted Goose (Anser erythvopus), which hatches out 
its five grayish-yellow young under a willow-bush in the marsh 
adjoining one of the lakes. This small arctic species, hardly larger 
than a domestic duck, is widely distributed in the interior of Fin- 
marken, but 1s nowhere really numerous. It seems to prefer 
streams with muddy banks, and thick, clay-stained water, 
