The height of the hut is three ells, its greatest breadth at the base two fathoms.
They always construct their huts in places where they have ready access to clear cold springs.
The inhabitants sleep quite naked on skins of reindeer, spread over a layer of branches of Dwarf Birch (Betula nana), with similar skins spread over them. The sexes rise from this simple couch, and dress themselves promiscuously without any shame or concealment.
When, as occasionally happens in the
course of the summer, they cannot procure fresh water, and are necessitated to drink the warm sea water, they are infallibly tormented with griping pains, with strong spasms in the region of the stomach, and pain in the lower part of the abdomen, accompanied with bloody urine. This is a species of colic, and is called ullem. It generally lasts but one day, rarely two. The same thing happens if they drink before they have broke their fast in a morning.
Every where around the huts I observed horns of reindeer lying neglected, and it is remarkable that they were gnawed, and sometimes half devoured, by squirrels.
At this season the young sprouting horns on the heads of those animals had attained but two or three quarters of an ell in length, covered with a soft and tender skin, so that I noticed, here and there, small drops of blood, from the gnats having stung them. The reindeer has four nipples, besides two spurious ones further back, which very
rarely afford any milk. There are no cutting teeth in its upper jaw. This animal certainly ruminates, as Ray rightly judged, notwithstanding the reports to the contrary collected in his Synopsis of Quadrupeds (p. 88, 89). The females are horned as well as the males, which is proper to this order of quadrupeds, but the horns of the females are more slender than those of the other sex.
In the country of Lapmark crawfish as well as fleas are unknown.
In the evening of the 1st of June we came to an island occupied by fishermen. They were peasants from Granoen, a place eight miles distant. They had built themselves a house without a chimney, so that the smoke could escape only by the door. They had however a couch to sleep on.