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suspicion, helping themselves herein, by conjuration and magick. Of this Pet.
Claud. gives us a memorable instance, in one, that having attemted to mischeif
his enemy, who was secured by countercharms, after long attendance
surpriz’d him asleep under a great stone, which by a spell he made break to
pieces, and kill him. The women, especially when grown old, cannot brook
any suddain provocation, but upon the least indignity offered fly out into
passion, and are hurried to the most wild transports that madness can
dictate. The Laplanders besides are very notorious cheats, and industrious to
over-reach each other in bargaining: tho heretofore they had the reputation
of plain dealing and honesty. So that ’tis probable that they took up their
present practice, having bin first cheated by those Strangers with whom they
dealt, and now think it best to be before hand with one another. It is
farther observable that they take great plesure, if they happen to outwit any
one; imagining that tho they are hopeless to overcome by manhoodand
courage, they have a nobler triumph over the minds of thofe whom they
circumvent. They are also noted to be of a censorious and detracting humor, so
as to make it a chief ingredient of their familiar converse, to reproch and
despise others: and this they do especially to Strangers, of what Country
soever. So fond admirers are all men of themselves, that even the Laplanders
will not exchange their interests with the Inhabitants of the most happy
Climate, and however barbarous they are, doubt not to prefer themselves
in point of wisdom, to those that are most ingenuously educated in Arts and
Letters. They are likewise exceedingly covetous, it being a part of their
cowardize to dread poverty; yet are they very lazy withall: and hereupon
Olaus Peters observes, that tho their Country in several parts of it be
capable of emprovement by husbandry, yet ’tis suffer’d to lye wast: nay so
unwilling are they to take pains, that till they are compelled by necessity, they
hardly perswade themselves to hunt or fish. From this their covetousness and
sloth arises an ill consequent, their undutifulness to their Parents when
grown old; not only to contemn and neglect, but even hate and abhor them;
thinking it either long before they possess what they have, or thinking it
grievous to provide for those from whom they can hope for no advantage.
Their last good quality is their immoderate lust, which Herberstein takes
to be the more strange, considering their diet, that they have neither bread
nor salt, nor any other incentive of gluttony: but their promiscuous and
continual lying together in the same Hut, without any difference of age, sex,
or condition, seems to occasion this effect. Tornæus indeed saies of his
Country-men, the Lappi Tornenses, who possibly are reclaimed by more civill
education, that they are very chaft, insomuch that among them scarce one
bastard is Chriftned in a whole year, which is the less to be wonder’d at, the
women being naturally barren.
Having given this account of the Laplanders ill qualities, it will now be
juftice to recount their vertues, as fisft their veneration and due esteem of
Marriage, which they more seldom violate, then many who pretend to be
much better Christians. They also abhor theft; so that the Merchants only
cover their goods so as to secure them against the weather, when they have
occasion to leave them, and at their return are sure to find them safe, and
untoucht; which is the more commendable, for that in Lapland there are no
Towns, or store-houses, and no man could be sure of any thing, if the
People were inclined to thievery. They are likewise (those I mean of the
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