MORE than one-fourth of Sweden is occupied by that vast wilderness, Lapland. It is a remnant of archaic nature; its majestic snow-crowned peaks are all of the very oldest geological structure. In primeval times it was a compact mass of rock-ground; but time, with the aid of water and ice, has formed a network of valleys between the remaining ranges and peaks, and great lakes receive the melting snow and preserve its crystalline purity, mirroring the snow-capped giants; from them the water seeks its way to the sea by numerous mighty rivers, winding around the towering masses and making many a daring leap down gorges in foaming and roaring and whirling play.

It is a wilderness of singular beauty and serene atmosphere, and one who has once tasted of its life will ever thereafter feel the longing for its grandeur and silence; for where can man feel the pulse of real life better than in places like this where the eternal snow protects the original purity of Nature? It has been found that the farther north one passes, the more alive become the soil and rock, radiating life in such abundance that it can often be actually seen as a kind of electric discharge. In summer-time, there is no vegetation like that around and above the Polar Circle, no colors and fragrance of flowers like those to be found in the sanctuary of these remote valleys where human foot so seldom intrudes. And where can one witness such interplay between Earth and its outer atmospheric layers, manifesting in all the varied phenomena of northern lights and mystic, trembling color-screens? One could sometimes fancy himself in the very forecourt of a grander mode of existence.

H. P. Blavatsky tells us in The Secret Doctrine that these mountain ranges were part of previous great continents occupied by earlier great races of humanity. What have they not witnessed? At one time in far-past aeons, enjoying a tropical climate, fertile soil, and a golden human life in all the bounteousness of Nature; at another, resting for ages below the water, or stripped of their luxuriant garb by a mighty ice-cover. Truly the history of it all is written somewhere and somehow even now; and as one treads the archaic rock-ground in a solitude that seems teeming with life, one begins to understand something of the language of the great silence around, and to feel the presence of the ancient past.

Since prehistoric times the Lapps, with their nomadic herds of reindeer, have been the warders of this pristine land. But like most ancient remnants of human races they are at present rapidly disappearing, and the "Sons of the Sun," as the Lapps call themselves, have had to give up much of their ground to the children of the present civilization. Lapland is entering upon a new era; railroads have already found their way across the wastes to bring its immense reserves of iron-ore out to the world; its waterfalls are being harnessed in the service of man; and its natural resources utilized in many novel ways. Though at the same latitude as southern Greenland, its climate is by no means so forbidding; it is, moreover, undergoing a slow but sure change which seems to be one of the causes why the reindeer are dying out. Evidently there are mighty forces at work, rendering hitherto shielded places on Earth accessible to our civilization as a preparation for a new phase of life awaiting all humankind.