TOO LATE LAPPLAND 267 



there was no snow left to keep up the river, which was lower 

 than had been known for many, many years. No rain, except 

 a thunderstorm, which did no good, fell during our stay; the 

 fish which had come up had gone on, those waiting below could 

 not get over a shallow part for want of water. A fortnight 

 before our arrival the fishing had been very good, but it fell 

 off suddenly, and owing to want of rain and a steadily falling 

 river, never recovered. Such a year had not been known for 

 thirty years ! How intensely annoying it is, and how often it 

 happens, after a long journey and very keen on the reasonably 

 to be expected sport, to find a season bad beyond all precedent. 

 Nothing is more exasperating when under those circumstances 

 people will keep on dinning into your ears that they have never 

 known such a thing before. We had, indeed, arrived too late, 

 and were no doubt ourselves to blame, but then other people 

 in other years had reached the "fiske stue" about the same 

 time and got most excellent sport. They had had rain and 

 floods, and snow had remained to melt and keep up the river, 

 but there were no such blessings in store for us the drought 

 was unprecedented, and remained so. 



But the water in our copper kettles, suspended over the fire 

 by means of slanting sticks, is boiling ; we add the coffee and 

 let the mixture stand simmering on the coals, while I unpack 

 from my Norwegian box and my Lapps from their sealskin bag 

 cups, sugar, butter, and whatever they contain in the way of 

 eatables. The men having grilled with the aid of a pointed 

 stick a piece of salted salmon, are now eating it together with 

 some flat cakes of very coarse brown bread plentifully spread 

 with butter; some dried reindeer meat, soaked in the coffee, 

 follows as a second course; sugar and milk sweet or sour are 

 not forgotten, and a thoroughly satisfactory meal is made by all 

 hands, and very enjoyable it is in the beautiful sunlit, but 

 starless, night. How doubly enjoyable it would have been had 

 only the fishing approached the lowest average even ; now that 

 horrid word "blank" had but too often to be written in the 

 daily record, and landed fish were indeed few and far between. 

 The Lapps had done exceedingly well during the first run and 

 had fished, and were fishing, the river to death almost. About 

 every hundred yards all the way up 100 miles were huge 

 stake and bag nets, with extensive tangles, more than a third 



