with beads, buttons, and metal
ornaments of all kinds, they nearly reach the ground. The whole is
so skilfully done, that at first one is inclined to believe that the
women here were gifted with a quite incredible growth of hair. A
mass of other bands of beads ornamented with buttons was besides
often intertwined with the hair in a very tasteful way, or fixed to
the perforated ears. All this hair ornamentation is naturally very
heavy, and the head is still more weighed down in winter, as it is
protected from the cold by a thick and very warm cap of reindeer
skin, bordered with dogskin, from the back part of which hang clown
two straps set full of heavy plates of brass or copper.

[Illustration: SAMOYED WOMAN'S DRESS. After a drawing by Hj Theel. ]

The young woman also, even here as everywhere else, bedecks herself
as best she can; but fair she certainly is not in our eyes. She
competes with the man in dirt. Like the man she is small of stature,
has black coarse hair resembling that of a horse's mane or tail,
face of a yellow colour, often concealed by dirt, small, oblique,
often running and sore eyes, a flat nose, broad projecting
cheekbones, slender legs and small feet and hands.

The dress of the man, which resembles that of the Lapps, consists of
a plain, full and long "pesk," confined at the waist with a belt
richly ornamented with buttons and brass mounting, from which the
knife is suspended. The boots of reindeer skin commonly go above the
knees, and the head covering consists of a closely fitting cap, also
of reindeer skin.

[Illustration: SAMOYED BELT WITH KNIFE. One-sixth of natural size. ]

The summer tents, the only ones we saw, are conical, with a hole in
the roof for carrying off the smoke from the fireplace, which is
placed in the middle of the floor. The sleeping places in many of
the tents are concealed by a curtain of variegated cotton cloth.
Such cloth is also used, when there is a supply of it, for the inner
parts of the dress. Skin, it would appear, is not a very comfortable
material for dress, for the first thing, after fire-water and iron,
which the skin-clad savage purchases from the European, is cotton,
linen, or woollen cloth.

Of the Polar races, whose acquaintance I have made, the reindeer Lapps
undoubtedly stand highest; next to them come the Eskimo of Danish
Greenland. Both these races are Christian and able to read, and have
learned to use and require a large number of the products