A heavy snow fell during the night. After they had had breakfast, Juhani and the driver found two pulkas (boat shaped sleighs) awaiting them. To each of these there was harnessed reindeer of a dark gray color, with huge branching antlers. There was only one rein for each of those in the pulkas to hold.

"Notice the reindeer's foot," Juhani's companion bade him. "See how broad and flexible it is. It is divided, too, and so spreads when it touches the snow."

"How can I get the reindeer to stop?" asked Juhani anxiously.

"Well, if you really need to stop and he refuses," replied the driver, "all you have to do is to fall out."

Their host wrapped furs around them as each took his place in one of the sleds hardly big enough to hold even one person. Then while his wife held the deer, the farmer showed Juhani how to wrap the rein properly around his wrist. This being managed, the wife let go, and they were off.

The country through which they now passed was tiresomely flat and covered with small birch and fir trees. After they had gone some distance it began to snow in thick cloud-like masses and the wind began to blow the snow about as if in violent play. Juhani did very well considering that this was his first reindeer ride. He managed to stay in the sled even when the reindeer bumped it hard against the trees. Fortunately the deep furrows in the road helped steady the sleighs, and Juhani began to feel proud of himself when finally the Lapp settlement came into view. Whether it was the sight of it or something else, Juhani did not know, but just then the reindeer suddenly swerved in such a way that Juhani was pitched out. He arose quickly and called to the reindeer to stop, but in vain. His companion was far ahead and so, somewhat angry and mortified, he made his way as best he could on foot the short distance still remaining.

These Lapp settlements in Northern Finland are few in number. It is said that there are not more than two thousand Lapps in Finland. The Finnish word Lapp or Lappu means Land-End folk. The Lapps use another name for themselves; it is Samelats and for their country, Same. Many of the Lapps are fishermen, but there are also forest and mountain Lapps.

One wonders how they could get along without the reindeer, which furnishes them with milk, meat, and even clothing, besides drawing their sledges. Because of these animals the Lapps prefer the open country where reindeer moss is plentiful. When it is not found, the spruce tree serves as a substitute, and a very extravagant one, for nearly a hundred trees are needed yearly for one reindeer.

When Juhani came up, he found the whole village surrounding his friend, who laughing, advanced with a muscular, well-proportioned Lapp to him. The Lapp shook his hand and assured him gravely that no one thought the worse of him for the mishap.

This Lapp was dressed in a loose reindeer costume reaching below the knees and fitting closely about the throat. It was adorned with gay trimmings of blue and scarlet and yellow. On his feet were soft, pliable skin boots.

He led them to the largest hut. Juhani noticed the quarters of frozen reindeer meat hanging from the branches of the trees near it and also the buckets full of frozen reindeer milk.

When they had entered, they seated themselves on the floor on skins and waited while snow was brought in, placed in a kettle over the fire, melted, and coffee made. This and food was soon placed before them. The latter consisted of reindeer meat, a kind of rye and barley bread, milk and a strong oily cheese. It tasted very good to Juhani after his cold walk. When he had eaten enough to satisfy himself as well as his hospitable hosts, he was shyly invited to join in an outside game with a group of dark-skinned children with straight silky brown hair, broad flat faces and noses, and very round eyes compared to their elders. These children looked like funny little bears, wrapped as they were in fur.

Two of the boys carried wooden sticks which they drove into the snow. These were made so that a stone could rest on the top. Each child tried his best to see how many of these he could knock off with snowballs in a given time.

Juhani found himself far behind his little friends. He was not so good a shot, and he lacked their quickness in making the balls. But he kept on trying.

In the afternoon when it grew too dark and cold to remain longer out of doors (it was thirty degrees below zero), two of the children went with Juhani into the unventilated hut, and sitting down near the fire took out their knives and began to carve. Juhani watched the older of the two, a boy about his own age, and soon saw that he was making a running reindeer on the handle of a knife. Great was his surprise next morning to have this presented him. The mother, in the meantime, had just laid down some reindeer intestines that she was making into gloves.

"How many reindeer have you?" Juhani asked the Lapp boy.

"Oh, nearly a thousand," the latter answered carelessly.

"What a number of uses you put them to! I wish you would tell me all of them."

The Lapp boy smiled. "To tell all would take me all day. I will tell you a few though. We make butter and cheese from their milk, eat their flesh as food, make our beds and tents, of their skins; their tendons give us our thread and many of our eating utensils are made out of their antlers."

"It must be much trouble to milk the reindeer every day," Juhani remarked.

"But we don't milk them every day," the Lapp boy quickly put in. "Only about twice a week. Oftener it would certainly be much trouble."

Juhani wanted to know still more. "Since the reindeer are loose, how can they find food when the ground is covered with snow several feet deep?" he asked.

"They can smell it," returned the Lapp. "They never make a mistake. As soon as they smell it, they scrape at the snow with their feet and nose until they get to it."

After another meal all gathered still closer to the log fire to listen to news of the outside world. For a long time the woodman talked, and then, growing tired, he begged the Lapp mother to tell some stories.

This she did in the Finnish language, which, like all the rest of her family, she spoke well. Soon Juhani was listening to the most marvelous tales, of giants as big as mountains with one enormous eye, of ugly witches that fly about like bats at night, and of frightful goblins that do much harm. Then, changing her tone, she softly told the story of the goddess, Nyavvinna, the kindly daughter of the Sun, a being who first caught and tamed the reindeer and gave them to the Lapps for their comfort and joy.

"Will you tell our fortune?" asked the woodman driver, eying her somewhat askance, when she had stopped. She smiled good naturedly at him, and going to a rude cabinet took from it a kind of drum by means of which she foretold a pleasant return journey on the morrow.

Juhani watched her with simple curiosity; his companion, however, was plainly uneasy, and when they were alone for a minute before lying down to sleep, he whispered, "Awfully uncanny folks, these Lapps are."

The next morning, too, despite the kindly parting, it was plain to Juhani that he was glad to get away. They had another exhilarating ride behind the reindeer. It had a delightful tang to it, a trace of wildness, to which something, even in Juhani's stolid nature, responded.

When they had left their sleds at the home of their Finnish friends the driver grew talkative and told Juhani many stories of other trips to Lapland, one the summer before to this same family. He laughed when he thought of the children. "They would have had a pleasant time gathering berries," he said, "had it not been for the mosquitoes. There were so many of these that they had to wear a sort of mosquito net fastened around the waist. When they tore these or objected too much, their mother rubbed tar all over their hands and faces. My! but they did look funny then," and he laughed so heartily that Juhani could not help but join him.

The man had many other interesting things to tell, for his experiences had been varied. Among other things he explained the old system still in use in parts of Finland of getting tar, an important Finnish industry.

"Those are fine tar trees," he said, when they had come to a clump of fir and larch. "Nothing better. Do you know how they work the thing? Well, the wood, after being cut, is piled high on a big platform that slopes from all sides to the center where there is an opening into a vat underneath. This pile is covered over with a thick layer of earth and grass and then lit from below. It smolders for several days until the pile sinks and a flame springs up. When the tar begins to flow it is caught in barrels. Shafts are afterwards attached to these barrels and they are then drawn by horses to the nearest water and loaded on boats for the coast.

"These boats are built to shoot the rapids. There is no iron used in them, the fir planks being bound together with wooden fibers. They don't weigh much so that they give in to slight shocks. Wood only three-fourths of an inch thick separates one from the water. The boats are about thirty by three feet, very long and narrow, you see, yet big enough to hold about twenty barrels, with high sides to keep out the foam.

"I tell you it takes skill and nerve to steer one of these boats. The pilots have to have a license. Besides the pilot, the crew generally consists of two men or a man and a woman. I wasn't much older than you are now when I first went in one. We started at Kajana on the Ulea River. My! how the boat did skim along! It seemed as free as a bird. I held my breath most of the time. And what a shock it was when it went plunk into the rapids which extend many miles! I'll never forget that first ride and the peculiar joy I felt at the danger. The last rapids are the Pyhakoski or Sacred Rapids. They are twelve miles long, but the trip over them took us barely twenty minutes. Here you can see the slope of the stream. Every second you go faster. Now you have to avoid a whirlpool, now a rock; sometimes both. I thought I'd just go deaf from the roar of the waters. When we reached smooth water again I thought I really was deaf, the silence was so overpowering."

"What causes the rapids?" asked Juhani.

"It's the enormous bowlders," responded his companion. "The rapids are mighty pretty. I've seen our largest waterfall, too. It's in a narrow gorge at Imatra and is sixty feet high. How many lakes make it, do you think? They say it is a thousand! There are always lots of tourists gazing at it and listening to its hissing and sputtering and roaring. When you first hear it you think there is a storm brewing. The spray is tossed thirty feet into the air and looks like a mass of rainbows."