sand individuals, however, dispersed over a wide extent of desolate surface, we need not very anxiously investigate the diversities of condition; nor need we seek to apportion among them, with scrupulous precision, the hurried comments of a passing

visitor.

Much has been said of their dwarfish stature; and Linnæus, who never met with any of them taller than himself, ascribes their diminutive size to the scantiness of their diet, and the severity of their climate. At the same time, we must not absolutely depress to the pigmy standard; for, of the many natives of both sexes whom Maupertuis had occasion to observe, one of the smallest was a well-proportioned woman, who measured four feet two inches and five lines. He likewise remarks, that the boys have often the semblance of mature years, and are frequently employed in driving the pulkas, or sledges, so as to be mistaken for men. Högström frequently met with natives of the different provinces, whose height was between five and six feet; but still they appeared low, from the want of artificial heels, and their slouching gait. Their dark complexion is probably only the effect of the smoke in which they are doomed to pass such a considerable portion of their existence; for we are told in the 2d vol. (p. 18.), that the fairness of the bodies of these dark-faced people, rivalled that of any lady whatever.' Högström will not allow that they are at all deformed; and even admires their female figures, notwithstanding the broad face and pointed chin. Were we to judge of the attractions of these Arctic damsels, from two specimens exhibited by the exploring naturalist, we might readily excuse his silence on their beauty and accomplishments.

"I was accompanied by a person, whose appearance was such, that at first I did not know whether I beheld a man or a woman. I scarcely believe that any poetical description of a fury could come up to the idea which this Lapland fair one excited. It might well be imagined that she was truly of Stygian origin. Her stature was very diminutive; her face of the darkest brown, from the effects of smoke; her eyes dark and sparkling; her eye-brows black; her pitchy-coloured hair hung loose about her head; and on it she wore a flat red cap. She had a gray petticoat; and from her neck, which resembled the skin of a frog, were suspended a pair of large loose breasts of the same brown complexion, but encompassed, by way of ornament, with brass rings. Round her waist she wore a girdle; and on her feet a pair of half boots.

"Opposite to me sat an old woman, with one leg bent, the other straight. Her dress came no lower than her knees; but she had a belt embroidered with silver. Her gray hair hung straight down, and she had a wrinkled face, with blear-eyes. Her countenance was altogether of the Lapland cast. Her fingers were scraggy and withered.

Next to her sat her husband, a young man, six and thirty years of age, who, for the sake of her large herds of rein-deer, had already been married ten years to this old hag."

In regard to the usual term of life to which the Laplanders attain, we are furnished with no precise data. Regnard, with all the ease of a Frenchman, asserts, that it is very considerable; and that some of them have even completed a century and a half. The premature looks of old age which disfigure their youth; the rigours of their protracted winter; and the wretched tenor of their existence, forbid us to credit such unreasonable accounts of their longevity. Besides, they are very unskilful in the computation of time; and, as our honest Swede reminds us, have no almanacks; so that they may be ignorant or careless of the chronology of their earthly pilgrimage. Linnæus, however, positively states, that they are a healthy race, a fact which we are not prepared to deny; although one or two of the nine reasons which he assigns for it will admit of dispute; and one or two more are rather at variance with some of his own allegations in other parts of the work. Their nosology, if fully and faithfully recorded, is certainly far from complicated. The ullem is a violent cholic, induced by drinking the warm sea-water when they cannot procure fresh. When thus attacked, they have recourse to soot, snuff, salt, and other remedies. They are likewise afflicted with asthma, epilepsy, scurvy, swelling of the uvula, goitres, pleurisy, rheumatic pains, lumbago, headaches, St. Anthony's fire, and disorders in the stomach and bowels. Owing to the thinness of the population, the variolous contagion is seldom propagated over any considerable tract of country: nor can we, by any means, vouch for the accuracy of the ensuing paragraph. I was informed, that in this neighbourhood [an alpine district] the inoculated small-pox is remarkably fatal. If the patients have but seventy or eighty pustules, they die of it as of the plague: they fly to the mountains, when infected, and die. The same is the case with the measles. It appears that both these diseases are aggravated by the violent cold, whence the patients die in so miserable a manner. It is not impossible,' observes Dr. Smith, 'that Linnæus might be misled here by the prejudices of his time, or by those of the people from whom he obtained his account.' In the earlier period of his life, he was somewhat notorious for facility of belief; but, in the present instance, we conceive it to be very probable, that he had misinterpreted the language of the natives, and that their report applied to natural small-pox; because, if the effects of inoculation had been found so baneful, they would at once have desisted from it. At the same time, if they fly to the mountains when under the disorder, we need not wonder that

they perish. Fevers and agues, it is alledged, are by no means common; and chilblains not more so than in other countries.. Coughs and dropsies are very rare; and stone and gout quite unknown. A long endurance of intense cold, coarse and precarious fare, smoky and close air, and inattention to personal cleanliness, can certainly never conduce to a sound and vigorous state of the human constitution: but there are countervailing cricumstances in the lot of the Laplander, which ought not to be overlooked, and which may in great measure compensate the privation of physicians and apothecaries ;-such are, their roaming disposition, their addiction to hunting and fishing, and their tendance of the rein-deer, which habituate them to air and exercise the manual, yet not oppressive occupation, in which so many individuals in a rude state of society are unavoidably engaged; their partiality to various preparations of milk; their warm clothing; their provision of Lichen plicatus and Carex sylvatica against damp and cold feet; and their happy ignorance of the follies and dissipations of more refined states of society.

Of their few medical nostrums, most seem to be abundantly absurd, or fantastical; but the toule, which is the most popular, may, in various cases, be attended with beneficial results. Their moxa, as the Japanese call it, but which they term toule, is made of a fine fungus found on the birch, and always chosen from the south side of the tree. Of this they apply a piece as large as a pea, upon the afflicted part, setting fire to it with a twig of birch, and letting it burn gradually away. This is repeated two or three times. It produces a sore that will often keep open for six months afterwards, nor must it be closed till it heals spontaneously. This remedy is used for all aches and pains; as the headache, toothache, pleurisy, pain in the stomach, lumbago, &c. It is the universal medicine of the Laplanders, and may be called their little physician.'

In some cases, it would seem, that infant children are fed with unboiled milk, through a horn. In general, they pass much of their time in a cradle, lined with the hair of rein-deer and sphagnum palustre, being frequently either rocked or swung, and sometimes tied close down in a wooden or leathern case. In four months, they are able to stand on their feet; but many of them, we presume, fall a sacrifice to improper management, especially to a very early exposure to cold. In this way only can we explain the stationary or rather retrograde state of population, in a country whose inhabitants are averse to migration, and exempted from the services of war.

On the subject of diet we can only remark, that it either varies very considerably in different districts, or, that some inconsistencies have found their way into the author's note-book.

Thus, in one passage, we find the natives feeding almost exclusively on fish; in another, on milk and cheese; and again, in a third, devouring their rein-deer with wasteful extravagance. In one place, we are led to infer, that water is their sole beverage; nay, we are positively told, that they use no artificial spirits: yet honourable mention is often made of brandy ;-in all matrimonial negociations, it is a sine qua non ;-and, as we learn from the author's direct testimony, it is the liquor of which they are most passionately fond.

6

Linnæus not only confirms the accounts of other writers relative to the swiftness of foot for which the Laplanders have been celebrated, but formally discusses eight causes of their remarkable fleetness. Even a boat thrown over a man's shoulders, does not always retard this quickness of pace. My companion, after committing all my property to my own care, laid his knapsack on his back, and turning the boat bottom upwards, placed the two oars longitudinally, so as to cross the seats. These rested on his arms, as he carried the boat over his head; and thus he scampered away, over hills and valleys,-so that the devil himself could not have come up with him.'

In the construction of their canoes and sledges, the harnessing of their rein-deer, the manufacture of fine thread from the sinews of these animals, &c. these demi-barbarians discover considerable ingenuity; but the ordinary details of their domestic economy bespeak no intellectual superiority, and required not to be specially registered. To what purpose, for example, should we be informed, that some of the Lulean Laplanders clean their halfboots and harnessing with the fat of fish, while others procure blacking from Norway? Or, what will it avail us to know, that, in their huts, these same Luleans stir the pot when boiling, with an oblong board, placed transversely at the end of a pole? Many objects of equal importance are not only described with phleg matic circumstantiality, but, moreover, illustrated by sketches of a truly Scandinavian aspect.

If proofs were wanted of the boorishness of Lapland manners, it might suffice to mention, that the occupiers of a hut sleep, in the costume of nature, on skins of rein-deer, spread over a layer of dwarf birch ;-that the sexes rise from the simple couch, and dress themselves promiscuously, without any shame or concealment;'-that they never cut their hair; and only occasionally employ a comb, or any similar instrument ;-and that the consequences are, accordingly, too moving to be described. Shirts and shifts, and a laundress or washerwoman, are alike unknown; but we must do them the justice to state, that they wash their dishes with their fingers, squirting water out of their mouths on the spoons! At one moment, we are told, that the women do almost

every thing but actually wear the breeches; and, at another, we find that they really do wear them in winter, which, being interpreted, is at least nine months in the year. The men, however, seem to have reserved the exclusive privilege of cookery; 'so that the master of a family has no occasion to speak a good word to his wife, when he wishes to give a hospitable entertainment to his guests. When Linnæus,' says the editor,' wrote this sentence, he seems to have had a presentiment of his own matrimonial fate, just the reverse, in this very point, of that he was describing.'

The moral and religious character of such beings as we have contemplated, cannot reasonably be supposed to be of the purest or most exalted nature; and though they recal to the writer's imagination the silver and the golden age of Ovid, and the times of the patriarchs, and have suggested to Thomson some lines of beautiful fiction; it must not be dissembled, that they are pinched by cold, or tortured by gnats; that they dwell in smoke, with weak or distempered vision; that they are filthy, lazy, ignorant, superstitious, and knavish. To complete the picture of their misery, their interests in the fisheries are postponed by government to those of Finnish colonists; and they are compelled, often at the risk of their lives, to attend on the church festivals, in the spring.

Before we close our report of this very extraordinary production, we deem it only an act of justice to the learned and laborious editor, to mention, that he has bestowed much trouble in decyphering the original manuscript, and in procuring a faithful version of its miscellaneous contents. Even the fac-similes of the rough drawings, though executed in a very different style from the pretty plates of Mr. Ackermann's Repository, contribute nevertheless, to the graphic and ghostly air of the whole performance. We certainly could have tolerated a more literal allowance of marginal annotation, illustrative of the laconic, desultory, and sometimes contradictory allegations of the text: But Dr. Smith has evinced his usual perspicacity in adjusting the nomenclature of many plants and animals which had been set down under vague or obsolete appellations.

We should also, perhaps, advert to those blind worshippers of the name of Linnæus, who we understand, have expressed their regret, that a work which may be supposed to lower the dignity of their idol, should have been rendered accessible to the profane vulgar. But we must be contented briefly to remind them, that the scraps of a portfolio can never, by the thinking part of mankind, be assumed as the basis of literary reputation; that the volumes before us are not infected with the nauseous vanity which pervades the author's diary of his life-but, under a rude