The Monastery of Petschenga: Sketches of Russian Lapland
9781465684295
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Come with me, and let us take a trip far away to the North Country, to the coast of the White Sea, to the land of the midnight sun, to the shores of Russian Lapland. There is very much in those parts that is still quite unknown. The district to which we journey has never yet been described, nor has it even been explored. The fisherman has not visited it. The rivers, with their flowing streams, and their beautiful pools swirling beneath the waterfalls, remain in their virgin purity, and have never been whipped by the salmon fisher. No one has pulled a line or trawled a net across the lakes, nor has anyone passed to and fro over them, dragging that miserable implement which is known as an oter. No sportsman has been to these parts. The hares skip about, and are as tame as if they were in the Garden of Eden. The hills and dales have never echoed to the hare hunters’ halloo, to the baying of hounds in full cry to the sound of a gun, or to the death shriek of the quarry. The last time I was in this district of Lapland I was sitting, at eleven o’clock one evening, in beautiful sunlight, outside the door of a Lapp who lived on the banks of a river which we shall very soon reach in our journeyings. Suddenly, I observed on the other side of the river, on a sunny knoll where the herbage springs up early in the season, five or six dark coloured animals skipping about. I thought they were sheep, and I asked the Lapp whether they were his sheep. ‘A sheep,’ said the Lapp; ‘that isn’t a sheep, it is a jenesiä; that is to say, a hare.’ ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘what a scrimmage, what an awful scrimmage there would be if one were suddenly to let loose in this place a couple of spirited Christiania harriers!’ At any time of the year, hares are to be found in almost incredible numbers, and at eleven o’clock at night, when all is calm and quiet, and the sun is still above the horizon, they may be seen coming out of their hiding places, and feeding and playing about. Ptarmigan and snipe are also found in great numbers, but none of them know what a setter or a pointer is like. Not one of them has ever seen a dog come snuffing and sneaking along, and then suddenly stand stock still, as if turned to stone, ready to make a desperate spring. Too much ink has not been wasted in describing the people who dwell in this region, and their surroundings. And yet it is a country which has a remarkable history. It was quite by accident that I was led to make inquiry about it, and the reader will be able to gather from the narrative that follows the result of my studies.
