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136 THROUGH NORWAY WITII A KNAPSACK.
other and their neighbours, their contentment and
disregard of the ambitious struggles, the greed of wealth,
and all the pomps and vanities of the civilized world.
It is strange to see a people who can read and write,
and who have family prayers morning and evening, still
living as nomade pastoral savages; clinging in all
particulars to the old habits of their forefathers, clothed in
the skins of beasts, and with so much contempt for
Manchester, Birmingham, and Sheffield, as to still make
their own thread of the sinews of their own reindeer,
their needles and pins of the bones, and their spoons of
the horns. They are probably the only people in the
world who do not use Staffordshire ware, and have not
the willow-pattern plate among them. Whatever may
have been the moral effect of reading and writing,
ZD ö-7
Christianity, and the example of civilization, their
influence on the industrial habits of these people is almost
nothing. The brass-nozzled mahogany bellows, and the
first-class copper tea-kettle, displayed as we should
display a finely-carved Indian war-club or a Japanese
cabinet, tended only to heighten the contrast between
their habits and the modern usages around them : for it
must be remembered that, as far as the Norwegians are
concerned, this arctic portion of Norway contains some
of the most refined, wealthy, and aristocratic people of
the country; the traders in fish, who are in continual
communication as merchants with the rest of Europe,
especially with the southern Catholic portions, where
the stock fish is chiefly consumed.
The present condition of these Lapps, their peaceful,
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