as
barn-yard fowls. The down of these birds forms a considerable source
of income to many persons who make a business of gathering it. It has
always a fixed value, and is worth, we were told, in Tromsoee, ten
dollars per pound when ready for market. The waste in preparing it
for use is large, requiring four pounds of the crude article as it
comes from the nest to make one pound of the cleansed, merchantable
down. Each nest during the breeding season produces about a quarter
of a pound of the uncleansed article. When thoroughly prepared, it is
so firm and yet so elastic that the quantity which can be pressed
between the two hands will suffice to properly stuff a bed-quilt. It
is customary for a Norsk lover to present his betrothed with one of
these quilts previous to espousal, the contents of which he is
presumed to have gathered with his own hands. A peculiarity of
eider-down, as we were informed, is that if picked by hand from the
breast of the dead bird it has no elasticity whatever. The natural
color is a pale-brown. Many of the localities resorted to by the
birds for breeding purposes are claimed by certain parties, who erect
a cross or some other special mark thereon to signify that such
preserves are not to be poached upon. The birds, like the people, get
their living mostly by fishing, and are attracted hither as much by
the abundance of their natural food as by the isolation of their
breeding haunts.

The Lapps are to be seen by scores in the streets of Tromsoee. They
are small in stature, being generally under five feet, with high
cheek-bones, snub-noses, oblique Mongolian eyes, big mouths, large
ill-formed heads, faces preternaturally aged, hair like meadow hay,
and very scanty beards. Such is a photograph of the ancient race
that once ruled the whole of Scandinavia. By taking a short trip
inland one comes upon their summer encampment, formed of a few crude
huts, outside of which they generally live except in the winter
months. A Lapp sleeps wherever fatigue or drunkenness overcomes
him, preferring the ground, but often lying on the snow. He rises in
the morning refreshed from an exposure by which nearly any civilized
human being would expect to incur lasting if not fatal injury. They
are the gypsies of the North, and occupy a very low place in the
social scale, certainly no higher than that of the Penobscot Indians
of Maine. Their faculties are of a restricted order, and missionary
efforts among them have n