ever yet yielded any satisfactory results.
Unlike our western Indians they are of a peaceful nature, neither
treacherous nor revengeful, but yet having many of the grosser
failings of civilized life. They are greedy, avaricious, very
dirty, and passionately fond of alcoholic drinks, but we were told
that serious crimes were very rare among them. No people could be
more superstitious, as they believe that the caves of the
half-inaccessible mountains about them are peopled by giants and
evil spirits. They still retain some of their half-pagan rites, such
as the use of magical drums and tom-toms for conjuring purposes, and
to frighten away or to propitiate supposed devils, malicious
diseases, and so on. The most advanced of the race are those who
inhabit northern Norway. The Swedish Lapps are considered as coming
next, while those under Russian dominion are thought to be the
lowest.

An old navigator named Scrahthrift, while making a voyage of
discovery northward, more than three centuries ago, wrote about the
Lapps as follows: "They are a wild people, which neither know God
nor yet good order; and these people live in tents made of
deerskins, and they have no certain habitations, but continue in
herds by companies of one hundred or two hundred. They are a people
of small stature and are clothed in deerskins, and drink nothing but
water, and eat no bread, but flesh all raw." They may have drunk
nothing but water three hundred years ago, but they drink alcohol
enough in this nineteenth century to make up for all former
abstemiousness. Scrahthrift wrote in 1556, and gave the first account
to the English-speaking world of this peculiar race whom modern
ethnologists class with the Samoyedes of Siberia and the Esquimaux,
the three forming what is called the Hyperborean Race. The word
_Samoyedes_ signifies "swamp-dwellers," and _Esquimau_ means "eater
of raw flesh."

The Lapps are natural nomads, their wealth consisting solely in their
herds of reindeer, to procure sustenance for which necessitates
frequent changes of locality. A Laplander is rich, provided he owns
enough of these animals to support himself and family. A herd that
can afford thirty full-grown deer for slaughter annually, and say ten
more to be sold or bartered, makes a family of a dozen persons
comfortably well off. But to sustain such a draft upon his resources,
a Lapp must own at least two hundred and fifty head. There is also a
waste account to be conside