The hamlet was composed of eighteen or twenty homesteads, with about one hundred and thirty inhabitants. There were over twenty horses, besides cows, sheep, and reindeer. The horses were so plentiful because they are used to haul timber. I reflected that the horse is a wonderful animal, and can live like man in many kinds of climate. All the houses at Karasjok were built of logs. The finest residence was that of the merchant of the place. The Karasjok Lapps, and others in the neighborhood, were very unlike those I had seen before. They were tall; some of them six feet in height. The women were also tall, most of them having dark hair. The fair complexion and blue eyes were uncommon. Men and women wore strange-looking head-dresses. The men wore square caps of red or blue flannel, filled up with eider down. The women put on a wooden framework of very peculiar shape, appearing more or less like a casque or the helmet of a dragoon. I only stopped the night in Karasjok, and after getting new reindeer at the post station and a new guide, started north. CHAPTER XXI LEAVE KARASJOK STILL TRAVELLING NORTHWARD.--THE RIVER TANA.--RIVER LAPPS.--FILTHY DWELLINGS.--ON THE WAY TO NORDKYN.--THE MOST NORTHERN LAND IN EUROPE. On leaving Karasjok I travelled northward, over the frozen Karasjoki, until I came to a broad stream called the Tana. As we drove on the river I saw here and there solitary farms and strange little hamlets inhabited by river Lapps. The occupation of the river Lapps is largely salmon catching in summer. These fish are very abundant in the rivers. Many, during the codfish season, engage themselves as sailors on the Arctic Sea. Almost every family has a small farm, stocked with diminutive cows; besides they have sheep and goats. During the summer their reindeer are taken care of by the nomadic Lapps. These reindeer have to go to the mountains near the Arctic Sea, on account of the mosquitoes. Now travelling was becoming very hard,--not on account of the snow, but because the inhabitants and their dwellings were so dirty. But I had one comfort. All over that far northern land I felt so safe; it never came into my head that these people would rob me, though they knew I had plenty of money with me, according to their ways of thinking, to pay for reindeer and other travelling expenses; but the Finns and the Lapps are a God-fearing people. The first day, I came to a place occupied by a single man. The house was so filthy, and vermin apparently so plentiful, that I whispered to my Lapp guide, "Let us go on." The Lapp was so tired that he looked at me with astonishment, and seemed to say: "Are not these comfortable quarters?" We got into our sleighs, however, and further on we stopped and tied our reindeer together. The Lapp slept in his sleigh covered with a reindeer skin, and I in my bag.