THE REIN-DEER. 



selves stopped by one of the streams being still unfrozen. 

 Some of the party, among whom was our traveller, return 

 to Alten to pass the night, while others take up their quar- 

 ters in the cottage of a Finlander, where the rendezvous 

 was to take place again early next morning. About nine 

 o'clock the journey was to be again commenced. " The 

 morning was cold and stormy ; I was jaded, miserably 

 tired for want of rest, and just on the point of being tied to- 

 the tail of a wild deer, and dragged at random in the 

 dark, in a kind of cock-boat, some hundred miles across 

 the trackless snows of Lapland. Our pulks were ranged 

 together in close order ; and the wappus or guide having 

 performed the last office for us, by tying each of us in as 

 fast as possible, and giving us the rein, jumped into his 

 own, and then slightly touching the deer with his thong, 

 the whole of them started off like lightning. 



" The want of light rendered it difficult to distinguish 

 the direction which we were going in, and I therefore left 

 it entirely to my deer to follow the rest of the herd T which 

 he did with the greatest rapidity, whirling the pulk behind 

 him. I soon found how totally impossible it was to pre- 

 serve the balance necessary to prevent its overturning, 

 owing to the rate we were going at, and roughness of the 

 surface in parts where the snow had drifted away, the 

 pulk frequently making a sudden bound of some hundred 

 yards, when the deer was proceeding down a smooth slip- 

 pery declivity. In the space of the first two hundred yards 

 I was prostrate in the snow several times, the pulk righting 

 again by my suddenly throwing my weight on the opposite 

 side. My attention was too deeply engrossed by my own 

 situation, to observe particularly that of my fellow travel- 

 lers, or to be able to assist them. The deer appeared at 

 first setting oft', to be running away in all directions, and 

 with their drivers alternately sprawling in the snow. As 

 I passed Mr. Heinchen's deer at full speed, I observed, to 

 my great wonder, tire former turned completely over in his 



