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"THE FINNISH PEASANT WE FOUND TO BE UNPICTURESQUE"

stalled until, with the aid of some stout timbers and several willing natives, we were able to work the car out of the mire. After that the loss of forty-five minutes by taking the wrong road did not improve our tempers, already sorely tried by the seemingly interminable days of the North. But the climax was not yet. It came when we met a man leading a horse attached to a wagon in which was a cripple seated upon a sofa. The horse shied, and

of his original demand. It was only upon arriving at Umea at half-past ten that night that we at last felt ourselves in anything like sanctuary, though not, however, without having to bend once more to fate by building our own bridge before we could cross a bad, open space in the road. Otherwise the roads had been from fair to good, and we had managed to cover 180 miles.

There was another ferry in store for us at Pitsund, and nine o'clock on Friday

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IN FINLAND A MOTOR-CYCLIST WAS OF GREAT ASSISTANCE AS PATHFINDER

morning, July 1, saw us at Lulea, with a watery crossing before us.

Our route now lay far to the east of the Swedish state railway to Gellivare. This line, over which runs the Lapland express, is the northernmost railroad in the world and traverses a monotonous forest-land in order to reach the iron-ore mountains of the district. There is much uninviting swamp and lake country hereabout, and farther to the north the conditions of transport are such that the region is left almost exclusively to the nomad Lapp and the government agent. Few travelers, indeed, have penetrated these inhospitable, untracked wastes.

We now bade farewell to the friendly shore of the Gulf of Bothnia as we set our faces toward Morjarv. From Stockholm had come the new tires and inner tubes, and these had lightened our hearts, because tires and inner tubes and gasolene were the only things which now counted.

After six hours on the road (it was then Friday, July 1), we accomplished about eighty miles, which ran through cultivated land and stretches of wooded country, and at eight o'clock in the evening we drew up at the wooden posting-station of Heden. Only thirty kilometers lay between us and the Arctic Circle! A long line of dark green marked the background of forest; the foreground was occupied by a primitive derrick well, which we welcomed as an old friend. There was no prodigality of comfort in the plain hostelry of this Northland region, but the clean beds and the simple fare were indeed wel

come to us. The good folk of the place were much interested and unquestionably curious about our adventuring.

When the morrow came, we arose wondering what the day would bring forth. We trusted it might be "gas," although we had been told that the only supply-station north of us was Malmberget. However, we started away hopefully at a quarter after eight, undaunted by the cloudy sky. We had been assured that the road was "all right all the way," but after nine miles it ended abruptly at a stream the bridge over which had broken down. There was nothing for us to do but to build another, so we gathered what we could of timber and native help, and in record time our bridge was built, and we fared across. Then came more trouble. There was an evident drop in the road beyond, and several men at work there held up their arms and gesticulated excitedly. We crept on, and found a fraillooking, temporary causeway which had to accommodate all traffic until the erection of a stone bridge was completed. The descent to the causeway was bad enough, but the ascent was through deep sand, with a gradient of twenty degrees. The rear wheels spun round ominously and sank deeper and deeper, but the sturdy workmen, recovered from their astonishment, came to our rescue, and the danger was passed.

In a few minutes we were due to cross the Arctic Circle and leave behind the native and more congenial atmosphere of the temperate zone. We looked out for some

official evidence of the circle.
We appre-
ciated that anything would serve-a
blazed path, a cairn, or, maybe, a substan-
tial boundary-line of metal, with polar
bears rampant in high relief, set up by
some enthusiastic arctic club. We began
to fear that, without some such index to
apprise us, we should cross the line with-
out being aware. We argued that there
must be, or at least should be, a finger-
post; for the Arctic Circle is a geographical
possession of sufficient romance to make
any nation proud to own a share of it and
adequately to indicate that share. But
there was nothing, and it was our odom-
eter alone which told us when our roll-
ing wheels had carried, us across the ro-
mantic line. We were disappointed with
Sweden, and took our photographs of the
crossing indifferently. We were not half
so enthusiastic as we had expected to be.
Did not Peary, by the way, take his fa-
mous picture of the pole with a sense of
the utter commonplaceness of the scene?

from our car almost into the arms of our
beaming host. The natives pressed about
us as we alighted, and, as a kind of sop to
their curiosity, we photographed the car
and them. It was amusing to see them
posing and "looking pleasant" as they
awaited the snap of the shutter. There
were bicycles and all other kinds of con-
veyances gathered about, for some had
evidently ridden far to see "the lions of
the hour." That night, just as midnight
was striking, we took several more pic-
tures, the old Lapp chapel and its grave-
yard standing out sharply in the light,
which was that of our late afternoon.

Once across, we fell to musing about the beyond. Therein was something worth the while. We had come to the end of civilization-such civilization as, in that frigid region, the railroad alone had brought. But the road must soon endthe most northern road in Europe, perhaps in the whole world. Beyond it lay what? We gazed and wondered.

Two hours later we crossed into Lap land. Here at last was something for which nations have a wholesome respecta boundary-line. It was a well-defined, wide, sharp line cut through the forest, completely cleared of trees and underbrush, and as distinct as a cañon of our own West. Half an hour later we made a hasty, impromptu luncheon of ham and eggs at the Lapp village of Schroeven. We were now nearly a hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, and our destination, Gellivare, was almost in sight. Our road was rough and deserted and much in need of repair. The houses along the way were scarcely less than twenty miles apart, and between. these habitations the single electric wire which ran above us was the sole reminder of civilization.

And so at last we came to Gellivare. The telephone, the modern tocsin of these strange Northern people, had given notice of our coming, and the entire town seemed drawn up outside the hotel as we sprang

LXXXII-55

On the following day we decided to run a few kilometers farther north to the mines of Malmberget, which for many generations has proved a lodestone to those desiring to make a home in this otherwise desolate region. Our route through the town was a veritable via triumphalis, the inhabitants lining the wayside in their Sunday clothes, waving handkerchiefs, aprons, and caps, and giving us many a hearty cheer. It made us curious to know in just what fashion we had been described to these folk of the mining town by the telephone operator at Gellivare. It must have been glowing, to say the least of it.

On arriving at the mines, we met the manager, and were delighted to find in him a sort of English-speaking compatriot. He had been in America more than four years, and, in his view, "nothing was too good for an American." We needed gasolene, and an abundance of it was placed at our disposal. When we mentioned payment, we were met with a prompt, "No, siree!" The only thing that would please our good-natured host was for us to help ourselves. And we accepted it-200 precious liters, be it known-with a gratitude that we did not attempt to conceal. A profusion of gasolene so far north was easily explained. It was used to operate a twenty-five horse-power truck that was in daily service at the mines. It is probably the only car in use beyond the Arctic Circle, and we were told that it was chiefly employed in conveying tools to the workings.

We estimated the population of Malmberget at about seven thousand. The town presented something of an American appearance, with its churches, schools, banks, and stores, and in many instances the origi

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MAP OF THE JOURNEY "FARTHEST NORTH BY MOTOR-CAR"

It was here that the Northern road came Beyond lay the wilderness, across which, when the sun is beating down, even the nomad Lapp would be hard put to it to find a path. All bird life has perished or fled. The winged creatures which hold possession are the horsefly and the mosquito. Farther our car could not have gone, for we had heard of travelers venturing afoot into those wilds, scrambling for days through the slimy

ing herds of reindeer feeding on the yellow mosses of the dreary earth-patches of the Lapp mark. Also we might have seen something of those battered, shaggy semiwrecks of men and sallow, pigeon-chested women of that far Northland, the victims of generations of inbreeding, existing in veritable wallows, amid toil and starvation, the strain of the wilderness, and the fever from insect bites and wretched food. But we preferred civilization, and so

returned to Gellivare, with that pleasant sense of relaxation which comes of a deed accomplished. We had broken away from only a few of the things associated with the complex fabric of highly organized society, but as before going southward we halted there at the frontier of human industry and habitation, we could look ahead and see where the trail, leaving the bounds of exact ownership, frayed like a rope'send and fluttered across the wastes of the frozen North.

IT was in the evening that we reached Heden, and six hours after leaving Malmberget we again put up at the postingstation. From Heden our route took us back to Morjarv, and there the road forked to the left for Haparanda and the land of the Finns. We were rapidly forgetting our Northern experiences and the belated exhilaration over our accomplishment in the eagerness with which we contemplated making the acquaintance of the race which, though subject to a Russian yoke, has strange kinship with the Magyar of Hungary. At first the roads were none of the best, but after six hours of continuous running we managed to make the frontier at Haparanda and once more to catch a glimpse of the Gulf of Bothnia. There we stopped and recovered the money which we had deposited as duty upon entering Sweden. The Russian duty we paid at the neighboring Finnish town of Tornea, where we enjoyed the rare spectacle of a beautiful sunset at half-past eleven at night. The following day we had the unique experience of crossing from one town to the other by sail-ferry. There were several more ferries to be crossed in that long run down the superb Finnish coast and through the country, over a good post-road at twenty-five miles an hour all the way to Helsingfors. Occasionally we saw two-wheeled carioles taking the steep pitches in the roads at full gallop behind the sturdy Finnish horses.

As we drew near our Southern goal, the Finnish capital, the days became perceptibly shorter; but there was no cessation of the heat, and our enemies, the mosquitos and flies, were still with us, so that we had to take refuge beneath veils. At all hours the insects swarmed about us, eagerly seeking the slightest opening in our veils. We were told that the only fortification against these thirsty enemies of man in the Northern summer is to saturate the head in the smoke of young twigs, very much as a ham is cured; but, needless to say, we preferred hand-to-hand conflict to a procedure which savored of suicide.

The Finnish peasant we found to be unpicturesque, a figure in strong contrast to his country, which, in its alternation of lake and stream and hillside, was a rare delight to the eye. The deep green of boundless forests accorded a sharp but not unpleasant note to the red which dominates Finnish architecture and is the official color of the country. It was in these Northern forests that we obtained a lively conception of the old Norse gods' habitation-Vidar's impenetrable, primeval woods, where reigned deep silence and solitude. We saw stretching before us boundless expanses of lofty trees, almost without a path among them, regions of monstrous shadows and cloistered gloom, and we felt the grandeur of the idea which forms the basis of Vidar's essence. seemed as though we were amid the beginning of all things, in the very presence of the Norseman's All-father.

It

And as we look back now upon the days we passed deep in the solitudes of the North, we feel that it was a wonderful world the fringe of which we crossed. We had come into touch with strange and wonderful people, living in days that had no end-a people whose minds have conceived of a world created from a strange admixture of fire and ice, wherein the forces of nature, the good and the bad, are ceaselessly struggling.

NOTE: Readers will recall two unique records of motor-experiences which have appeared in THE CENTURY: "Motoring in a Cactus Forest" in March, 1910, and “A Motor Invasion of Norway" in December, 1909. The present paper will soon be followed by others on trips by automobile in Tunis and in Algiers, and we shall take pleasure in giving consideration to accounts that may be offered of similarly novel trips in out-of-the-way regions.-THE EDITOR.

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