The Laplanders dye their wool red chiefly with the Blood-root or Tormentil, Tormentilla erecta. A red colour is given to their leather by means of fir bark. The men wear a kind of trowsers which reach down to their feet, and are tied round their half boots, so as to keep out water. They wear no shirt nor stockings. The waistband is fastened by thongs, not buttons.
As to the diseases of these people, I was informed here that fevers are very rare indeed, and that the smallpox is also of unfrequent occurrence. Hence, when it does come, many old people with grey hairs fall a sacrifice to the latter disorder, which however is not widely communicated, any more than fever, because of the very thin population. Of intermittent fever I met with only one example, and of calculus another. They cure a cough by sulphur laid on the lighted fungus which serves them as tinder, or on the fire, the smoke of which inhaled into the lungs is esteemed
a specific; but it is a very fallacious one. For the headache a small bit of the aforesaid fungus is laid on the place where the pain is most violent, and, being set on fire, it burns slowly till the part is excoriated. This therefore is the Moxa of the Laplanders. In case of a prolapsus uvulæ they cut off the protuberance with a pair of scissars. For the colic or belly-ache they rub the nails with salt, besides which they administer oil internally.
I here satisfied myself about the native species of Angelica, which are two only, not three. The Biœrnstut is Angelica sylvestris, the Botsk A. Archangelica. (See Flora Lapponica, n. 101, 102.)
The bountiful provision of Nature is evinced in providing mankind with bed and bedding even in this savage wilderness. The great Hair-moss (Polytrichum commune), called by the Laplanders Romsi, grows copiously in their damp forests, and is used for this purpose. They choose the starry-headed plants, out of the tufts of
which they cut a surface as large as they please for a bed or bolster, separating it from the earth beneath; and although the shoots are scarcely branched, they are nevertheless so entangled at the roots as not to be separable from each other. This mossy cushion is very soft and elastic, not growing hard by pressure; and if a similar portion of it be made to serve as a coverlet, nothing can be more warm and comfortable. I have often made use of it with admiration; and if any writer had published a description of this simple contrivance, which necessity has taught the Laplanders, I should almost imagine that our counterpanes were but an imitation of it. They fold this bed together, tying it up into a roll that may be grasped by a man's arms, which if necessary they carry with them to the place where they mean to sleep the night following. If it becomes too dry and compressed, its former elasticity is restored by a little moisture.
June 6.
In order to observe how fast the water rose in the river, which was increasing daily, I had fixed a perpendicular stick the preceding evening at eight o'clock close to the margin of the stream. This morning at five it had gained a foot in depth and two feet in breadth. Near the bank, which is continually undermining in some part or other by the current, stones are found incrusted with sand, coagulated as it were about them by means of iron. Some of them seem as if they had been blown to pieces with gunpowder.