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56 TRAVELS
mountains, never approach near enough to civilized focieties to
acquire any ideas of their form and conftitution. Free by nature,
their manner of living exempts them from the neceflity of laws.
They dwell in a country which cannot be inhabited by any other
race of mortals. They feed their rein-deer with a vegetable re-
jected by every other animal. Their only fociety confifts in the
union of a few families drawn together partly by common wants,
and partly by focial affetion : and when two fuch families, with
their herds, chance to meet on the fame fpot, there is land enough
for the one to accoft the other in the words of Abraham to
Lot :—* If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the
“right; or if thou depart to the nght hand, then I will go to
« the left.”
It was not without extreme difficulty that we were able to
perfuade our Laplanders that we were neither kings nor commif-
faries, nor priefts, but only private individuals who were travel-
ling from mere curiofity. The principle of curiofity, which exifts
only in cultivated minds, and which is derived either from felf-
intereft, in fearch of fomething that may be advantageous, or from
the pride of knowing more than other men, or from a defire of
comparing what is already known with fome object or objects not
yet. known—this principle is obvioufly too abftrufe, and can in
no wife enter into the head of a roving Laplander. During the
whole of our intercourfe with thefe people, we could never dif-
cover among them the {malleft fign of any fentiment of religion
or devotion. They never offered up any prayer to the Deity-
when
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