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JOURNEY OF MAUPERTUTS. , 259
dining with the clergyman at Kingis, M. Antilius, we left it, and arrived in the evening
at Pello, where we flept in the fame houfe that we had refided in fo much, and which
we beheld very likely the laft time.
Proceeding from Kengis we met upon the river feveral’ caravans of Laplanders eai~
ing {kins and fifh to Pello, which they had been bartering for at the fairs of Upper
Lapland with the merchants of Torneo. Thefe caravans formed long files of pulkas :
the firft rein-deer, who is guided by a Laplander on foot, draws the firft pulka, to which
the fecond rein-deer is fattened; and in like manner the remainder, to the number of
thirty or forty, who every one follow exactly in the little furrow traced in the fhow by
the firft, and deepened by all the reft. When they are tired, and the Laplanders have
pitched on a {pot where they mean to encamp, they form, with the deer faftened to their
pulkas, a large circle: every one makes his bed in the fnow on the middle of the river,
and the Laplanders diftribute mofs among them: they themfelves are little more diffi-
cult in their accommodation; many are fatisfied with lighting a fire, and ly on the river,
while their wives and children fetch from their pulkas fore fifh for their fupper ; others
erect akind of tent, a receptacle worthy of a Laplander, being no other than‘miferable
rags of a coarfe woollen cloth, rendered by fmoke ‘as black as if it had been dyed; it
is faftened round certain ftakes, which form a cone, with an opening at the top which
ferves for a chimney. There the moft voluptuous, ftretched on bear and rein-deer
fkins, pafs their ime in fmoking tobacco, and looking with contempt on the occupations
of the reft of men. :
Thefe people have no other dwellings than tents: all their wealth confifts in their
deer, which live on nothing but a mofs that is not every where to be found. When
their herd has {tripped the fummit of one mountain, they are obliged to condu@ them
to another, thus obliged to live continually wandering in the defarts. heir foreft,
‘dreadful in winter, is even lefs fit for living in in fummer: an innumerous fwarm of
flies of every defcription infect the air; they follow men by the fmell from a great dif-
‘tance, and form around every one who {tops an atmofphere fo thick as to exclude the light.
To avoid them it is neceflary to be continually moving without reft, or to burn green
trees, which caufes a thick {moke, and driyes them away by its becoming infupportable,
as it is almoft to man himfelf: and laftly, they are fometimes obliged to cover their fkin
with the pitch that exudes from the firs. Thefe flies {ting fharply, or rather many of
them frequently occafion real wounds, from which the blood flows abundantly.
During the time that thefe infeéts are moft violent, that is to fay, in the two months
which we pafled in forming our triangles in the foreft, the Laplanders fly to the coafts
of the ocean with their rein-deer to get free from them.
Ihave not yet fpoken of the appearance or fize of the Laplanders, of which fo many
fables have been related. Their diminutivenefs has been greatly exaggerated ; it is im-
poflible to exaggerate on their uglinefs. The rigour and length of a winter, againft
which they have no other fhelter than what the wretched tents afford which I have de-
fcribed, in which they make a blazing fire, which fcorches them on one fide, while they
are frozen on the other: a fhort fummer, but during which they are inceffantly burnt
by the rays of the fun; the barrennefs of the ground, which produces neither grain,
nor fruit, nor pulfe, feem to have caufed a degeneration of the human race in thefe
climates. As to their fize, they are fhorter than other men, although not fo much fo
as fome travellers have related, who make pygmies of them. Out of a great number
of menjand\women that I faw, I meafured a woman apparently of twenty-five or thirty
years of age, and who fuckled an infant which fhe carried in the bark of a birch-tree :
VOL, Ie LL fhe
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