er-skin, shorn of hair, and, as it appeared to me,
also hardened or tanned by some process. Its shape much resembled a huge
shoe of the fashion of the middle ages, having a high back, and turned
up at the foot or toe. It reminded me strongly of the bark cradles of
the North American Indians, and was equally adapted to be slung at the
mother's back on a journey, or to be hung up in a gamme, or on a tree,
out of the reach of hungry dogs or prowling wolves. The head of the
cradle was spanned by a narrow top, from which depended a piece of
coarse common red check woolen stuff, drawn so tightly over the body of
the cradle that one would have fancied the little creature in some
danger of suffocation, and it was only by an occasional feeble struggle
under the cloth, that I was apprised of the existence of a living
creature beneath it. Evidently this cover was necessary, for I saw a
huge musquito--the summer pest of the North--settle repeatedly upon it,
as though longing to suck the blood of the innocent little prisoner.

The entire number of Laps now assembled could not be less than forty,
men, women, and children included; and the three dogs had been joined by
at least a score of their brethren. The men, generally, were attired in
rough and ragged paesks, either of reindeer-skin or of sheep-skin; the
hair of the latter being worn inward, but of the former, outward. The
women had all paesks of cloth, but their appearance was so strikingly
similar to that of the men, and the hair of both sexes hung down over
the shoulders and shaded the face so much, that it was, in some cases,
difficult, at the first glance, to distinguish the sex of the younger
adults. The heads of the women were bare, and they all wore girdles of
leather, studded with glittering brass ornaments, of which they are
excessively proud. The men wore caps, as already described, and plain
leather girdles, with a knife attached in a sheath, and in some
instances the woman also wore a small knife. The children had miniature
paesks of sheep-skin, their only clothing. I had read of the generally
diminutive stature of the Laplanders, and found them to be truly a
dwarfish race. On an average the men did not appear to exceed five feet
in height, and the women were considerably less. They were most of them
very robust, however, and probably the circumference of their chest
nearly equaled their height. The complexion of all was more or less
tawny, their eyes light-colored, a