The Lapps were to sleep in one of the barns, and as it was the last time we should probably meet on this earth, we escorted them across to their bedchamber. We passed through a tiny field of growing barley, the first we had seen in this northern latitude, and then we came upon the wooden outbuilding of the farm. Half was hay-chamber, half mistal, and set between the stalls for the cows was a great square stove of rubble stone to give the beasts heat during the perishing cold of winter. And there we said our last good-byes to the men who had served us so well, and went back towards our own sleeping-place.
The lake below the house lay like glass, and the narrow cones of the pines on the opposite shore were mirrored exactly in its surface. Pink clouds swam below them. On the lake-shore was a bath-house with its empty doorway blackened by smoke, and in the eaves a couple of martins had built a nest in a coil of birch-bark. From the dwelling-house came the voice of the midwife, scolding.
Now, to give a full account of the exasperations of Scurujärvi would be quite impossible in this place, because some of the remarks which we felt compelled to make to that lanky, feckless Finn who owned the place were intended for his private ear alone. We had to tell him exactly what we thought of him many many weary times.
In the first instance, further progress by carriers was obviously out of the question, because, except for the feckless one himself, there was not a man about the place. But there were sledges. There were no horses or reindeer available, but something in the cow line would serve our purpose, and we demanded therefore a sledge and a cow. Upon which there fell an avalanche of talk. The limp woman with the new-born baby stood in the doorway of the dairy-bedroom to listen, and the gaunt midwife came inside and added her clatter to the rest. It seemed that for a thousand reasons a cow and a sledge were unavailable.
We ceded the point; we had an alternative plan. Our romancing map depicted a lake before this town of Scurujärvi, and our eyes showed us that the lake was there. This propped up the map's credit. It also showed a stream running out of this lake and joining the main river at Küstula, which drained into the Gulf of Bothnia. So by way of discovering whether this linking stream did really exist, we boldly demanded a canoe, which should take us down to Küstula by water.