2 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



less generally resorted to. But Lapland no longer 

 lies outside the possibilities of the tourist ; and we 

 have no doubt that many readers, to whom the 

 experiences which we are about to record will be 

 fresh, may be tempted on their own account to essay 

 a tour by reindeer within the Arctic Circle ; while 

 others, less ambitious to be thought venturesome, 

 may be pleased to have an opportunity of acquiring 

 some information at second hand upon the subject. 



At seven o'clock on the morning of Sunday, 16th 

 March 1879, we left Hammerfest, the most northerly 

 town in the world, by the little steamer Robert, 

 bound for the inner reaches of the beautiful Alten 

 Fjord. Our party consisted of four : the amtmand l 

 of Finmarken and his son, the forstmester, and my- 

 self. Our immediate destination was Bosekop, where 

 we expected to meet our Lapp guides with their rein- 

 deer, to take us over the fjeld to Vadsoe on the Var- 

 anger Fjord, fully three hundred miles away. 



The weather was anything but propitious. Thick 

 lowering clouds were gathering in the south-east, and 

 everything seemed to threaten that in a very short 

 time a severe snowstorm would fall upon us. This 

 in itself would have been of no consequence had it 

 not been that it would, firstly, hinder us from seeing 

 the splendid rock-formations of Alten, and secondly, 



1 The office of amtmand corresponds to that of high sheriff 

 or lord-lieutenant in this country, though the functionary 

 most nearly resembling him is the French prtfet. 



