74 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



forward, his manner officious, his behaviour foolish. He may be a 

 bold beggar, an impudent vagabond, but he is never a cunning thief 

 or robber, weighing all circumstances, and using all available means 

 to attain his end. Unconcernedly he stares at the huntsman's gun; 

 unwarned by the ball, which passes whistling over his body, he 

 follows his worst enemy; unhesitatingly he forces his way into the 

 birch-bark hut of the wandering reindeer-herdsmen; without fear 

 he approaches a man sleeping in the open, to steal the game he has 

 caught, or even to snap at a naked limb. On one occasion an Arctic 

 fox at which I had several times fired in vain in the dusk, kept fol- 

 lowing my steps like a dog. My old sporting friend, Erik Swenson 

 of Dovrefjeld, relates that one night a fox nibbled the fur rug on 

 which he lay, and old Steller vouches for many other pranks which 

 this animal plays, pranks which every one would declare incredible 

 were they not thoroughly guaranteed by corroborating observations. 

 An insufficient knowledge of human beings, so sparsely represented 

 in the tundra, may to some extent account for the extraordinary 

 behaviour of this fox, but it is not the only reason. For neither the 

 red fox nor any other mammal of the tundra behaves with so little 

 caution; not even the lemming approaches him in this respect. 



A strange creature certainly is this last inhabitant of our region 

 whatever species of his family we consider. He, or at least his 

 tracks, may be seen everywhere throughout the tundra. The tracks 

 run in all directions, often through places overgrown by dwarf- 

 birches, narrow, smooth, neatly-kept paths in the moss, going 

 straight for several hundred yards, then diverging to right or left, 

 and only returning to the main path after many circuits. On these 

 we may often see, in great numbers during a dry summer, a little, 

 short-tailed, hamster-like animal nimbly pattering along and soon 

 disappearing out of sight. This is the lemming, a rodent smaller 

 than a rat, biit larger than a mouse, and with brightly but irregu- 

 larly marked skin, usually brown, yellow, gray, and black. If we 

 dissect the animal we see, not without surprise, that it consists 

 almost entirely of skin and viscera. Its bones and muscles are fine 

 and tender; its viscera, especially the alimentary and the repro- 

 ductive organs, are enormously developed. This state of things 



