Due North or Glimpses of Scandinavia and Russia - Maturin Murray Ballou (best books to read all time .txt) 📗

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 never 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 considered. Not a few are destroyed annually by wolves and bears, notwithstanding the usual precautions against such casualties, while in very severe winters numbers are sure to die of starvation. They live almost entirely on the so-called reindeer moss; but this failing them, they eat the young twigs of the trees. When the snow covers the ground to a depth of not more than three or four feet, these intelligent creatures dig holes in order to reach the moss, and guided by some strong instinct they rarely fail to do so in just the right place. The Lapps themselves would be entirely at a loss for any indication where to seek the animal's food when it is covered by the deep snow.

What the camel is to the Arab of the desert, the reindeer is to the Laplander. Though found here in a wild state, they are not common, and are very shy sometimes occupying partially inaccessible islands near the main-land, swimming back and forth as necessity may demand. The domestic deer is smaller than those that remain in a state of nature, and is said to live only half as long. When properly broken to harness, they carry lashed to their backs a hundred and thirty pounds, or drag upon the snow, when harnessed to a sledge, two hundred and fifty pounds, travelling ten miles an hour, for several consecutive hours, without apparent fatigue. Some of the thread prepared by the Lapp women from the sinews of the reindeer was shown to us, being as fine as the best sewing-silk, and much stronger than any silk thread made by modern methods.

These diminutive people are not so poorly off as one would at first sight think them to be. The climate in which they live, though terrible to us, is not so to them. They have their games, sports, and festive hours. If their hardships were very trying they would not be so proverbially long-lived. Though an ill-formed race, they are yet rugged, hardy, and self-reliant. Their limbs are crooked and out of proportion to their bodies; one looks in vain for a well-shaped or perfect figure among them, and indeed it may be safely doubted whether a straight-limbed Lapp exists. They are one and all bow-legged. The country over which these people roam is included within northern Norway, Sweden, Russia, and Finland, say extending over seven thousand square miles; but the whole race will hardly number thirty thousand in the aggregate. Lapland in general terms may be said to be the region lying between the Polar Ocean and the Arctic Circle, the eastern and western boundaries being the Atlantic Ocean and the White Sea, two thirds of which territory belong to Russia, and one third is about equally divided between Norway and Sweden.

We repeat that the reindeer is to the Lapp what the camel is to the Arab. This small creature is the Lapp's cow, horse, food, clothing, tent, everything. Food is not stored for the animals, as they are never under cover even in the severest weather, and they must procure their own food or starve. The females give but a small quantity of milk, not more than the amount yielded by a well-fed goat, but it is remarkably rich and nourishing. Oddly enough, as it seemed to us, they are milked but twice a week; and when this process is performed, each animal must be lassoed and firmly held by one person while another milks. Many of the doe on the occasion of our visit were accompanied by their fawns, of which they often have two at a birth. These little creatures are able to follow their dam twenty-four hours after birth. We were told that the bucks are inclined to kill the fawns when they are first born, but are fiercely attacked by the dams and driven away. A Swiss chamois is not more expert in climbing mountains than are these Norway deer; and were it not for the efficient help of their dogs, which animals are as sagacious as the Scotch sheep-dogs, the Lapps would often find it nearly impossible to corral their herds for milking and other purposes. In their nature deer are really untamable, being never brought into such complete subjection as to be quite safe for domestic use. Even when broken to harness, that is when attached to the snow-sledge or carrying burdens lashed to their backs, they will sometimes without any premonition break out into rank rebellion and violently attack their masters. We were told by an intelligent resident of Tromsoee that the Lapps never abuse these animals, even when they are attacked by them. They only throw some garment upon the ground upon which the buck vents his rage; after which the owner can appear and resume his former control of the animal, as though nothing had happened out of the common course of events.

The Lapps live in low, open tents during the summer season, moving from place to place as food is found for their herds, but keeping near the sea-coast for purposes of trade, as well as to avoid those terrible pests the gad-fly and the mosquito, insects too obnoxious for even the endurance of a Laplander. In the winter they retire far inland, where they build temporary huts of the branches of the trees, plastering them inside and out with clay, but leaving a hole in the top to act as a chimney and convey away the smoke, the fire being always built upon a broad flat stone in the centre of the hut. In these rude, and according to our estimate comfortless, cabins they hibernate rather than live the life of civilized beings for eight months of the year. Hunting and fishing occupy a portion of their time; and to kill a bear is considered a most honorable achievement, something to boast of for life, rendering the successful hunter quite a hero among his associates. Though the forest, river, and sea furnish this people with more or less food throughout the year, still the Lapp depends upon his herd for fixed supplies of sustenance. The milk made into cheese is his most important article of food, and is stored for winter use. Few are so poor as not to own forty or fifty reindeer. The Norwegians and Swedes who live in their neighborhood have as great a prejudice against the Lapps as our western citizens have against the North American Indians. This as regards the Lapps is perhaps more especially on account of their filthiness and half-barbarous habits. It must be admitted that a visit to their huts near Tromsoee leads one to form an extremely unfavorable opinion of the race. When a couple of young Lapps desire to become married a priest is sometimes employed, but by common acceptation among them the bride's father is equally qualified to perform the ceremony, which is both original and simple. It consists in placing the hands of the two contracting parties in each other, and the striking of fire with a flint and steel, when the marriage is declared to be irrevocable. Promiscuous as