sey, which for durability and warmth is unsurpassed. Sailors and
fishermen all over the Northern seas consider themselves fortunate if
they can get possession of a Faroese shirt. The costume of the men,
which is chiefly home-made, consists of a rough, thick jacket of brown
wool; a coarse woolen shirt; a knitted bag-shaped cap on the head; a
pair of knee-breeches of the same material as the coat; a pair of
thick woolen stockings, and sheepskin shoes, generally covered with
mud--all of the same brown or rather burnt-umber color. Exposure to
the weather gives their skins, naturally of a leathery texture,
something of the same dull and dingy aspect, so that a genuine
Faroese enjoys one advantage--he can never look much more dirty at one
time than another.

The women wear dresses of the same material, without much attempt at
shape or ornament. A colored handkerchief tied around the head, a
silver breast-pin, and a pair of ear-rings of domestic manufacture,
comprise their only personal decorations. As in all countries where
the burden of heavy labor is thrown upon the women, they lose their
comely looks at an early age, and become withered, ill-shaped, and
hard-featured long before they reach the prime of life. The Faroese
women doubtless make excellent wives for lazy men; they do all the
labors of the house, and share largely in those of the field. I do not
know that they are more prolific than good and loving wives in other
parts of the world, but they certainty enjoy the possession of as many
little cotton-heads with dirty faces, turned up noses, ragged elbows,
and tattered frocks, as one usually meets in the course of his
travels. Two fair specimens of the rising generation, a little boy and
girl, made an excellent speculation on the occasion of my visit to
Thorshavn. Knowing by instinct, if not by my dress, that I was a
stranger, they followed me about wherever I rambled, looking curiously
and cautiously into my face, and mutually commenting upon the oddity
of my appearance--which, by-the-way, would have been slightly odd even
in the streets of New York, wrapped, as I was, in the voluminous folds
of Captain Sodring's old whaling coat, with a sketch-book in my hand
and a pair of spectacles on my nose. However, no man likes to be
regarded as an object of curiosity even by two small ragamuffins
belonging to a strange race, so I just held up suddenly, and requested
these children of Faroe to state explicitly the grounds of t