I! 



III. 



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 

 rangifevina) 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, lie 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 erythropus), 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 is nowhere really numerous. It seems to prefer 

 streams with muddy banks, and thick, clay-stained water, 



