The Land of the Long Night | Page 7

over four days, and
with no appearance of holding up. The wind at times blew very hard.
In spite of the snowstorm I continued to travel, and had passed the
towns of Söderhamn, Hudicksvall, Sundsvall, and Hernösand, with
their streets deep in snow. On the fifth day we had great difficulty in
getting along. In some places the ploughs had not passed over the road
since two days before, for we were now going through a very sparsely
inhabited country. Some parts of the road were honeycombed with
holes about fifteen inches deep, made in this way: each horse that had
passed stepped in the tracks of the one that had preceded him, and
made the holes deeper and deeper, which made walking very difficult
for the poor animals.
The further north I went the deeper became the snow, and travelling
became tedious. Our sleigh tumbled on one side or the other, upsetting
before we could say "Boo!" At each effort the poor horse made to
extricate himself, we had either to get out of the sleigh or be thrown out.
The poor brute would often sink to his neck, and sometimes almost to
his head when he got out of the snow-plough's track! In order to make
some headway and to make up for the slowness of the horses and bad
roads, I travelled sixteen and eighteen hours a day, and when I came to
a post station I was pretty tired.
The ploughs I now met were drawn by six horses and attended by four
or five men. The struggles of the poor animals as they sank continually
in the deep soft snow and tried to extricate themselves, were sometimes
painful to behold.
We always had to be careful to drive in the middle of the road, where
the snow had been cleared and packed by the snow-ploughs and the
rollers. Sometimes we could not tell where it was, for the land around
was deeply buried and the track of the snow-ploughs was hidden by the
fresh-fallen snow.
When my driver made a mistake and drove one way or the other
outside of the track, the first intimation we had was that of the horse
sinking suddenly, being ourselves upset or nearly so. Then we had a lot

of trouble putting him on the track again.
After several of these mishaps, the driver would say to me: "Now I am
going to let the horse go by himself. He is accustomed every year to go
in deep snow on this road and he will know the way." "You are right," I
would reply.
When let alone the horse would walk very slowly, and he would
hesitate each time he put either his right or his left foot on the snow, to
make sure he was on the right track. If he thought he was on the left of
the road, it was his left foot that came down first; if he thought he was
to the right of the road, he put his right foot down, but not until he had
made sure that he was right. If he saw that he had made a mistake, he
turned quickly to one side or the other.
One day the horse suddenly dropped one leg in the soft snow, on the
right side of the track; this unbalanced him and--bang! he fell on his
side, taking the sleigh with him. We were pitched out, and as we got up
on our legs we found ourselves in snow up to our necks. Only after
frantic efforts did the horse succeed in regaining his footing.
As I looked around and saw our situation, and that our three heads were
just above the snow, with the horse's head looking at us, his eyes
seeming to say, "Are you not going to help me out of this?" I gave a
great shout of laughter, for the sight was so funny that I forgot being
pitched out--and I said to the driver, "Don't we look funny, the horse
included, with only our heads and shoulders above the snow!"
What a job we had to extricate ourselves, put the poor horse on the
track again, and afterwards right the sleigh. Then we found that the
harness was broken in several places, and we had to mend it the best
way we could with numb fingers. I had stopped laughing, for there was
no fun in that.
"At this rate of travelling," I said to the driver, "it will take a whole day
to go three or four miles. I do not know whether our poor horse will be
able to stand it. Look at him! He looks as if he were a smoke-stack, so
much steam is rising from his body. He may become so exhausted that

he