Laplanders have several plays or amusements.
Children make of the dwarf birch (Betula nana) something like reindeer's horns, with which they gore one another in sport. They amuse themselves frequently by building little huts of stone.
Grown-up people play very well at tennis, but they seldom partake of that diversion. More common amusements are blindman's buff, and drawing gloves.
Here I think it worth while to observe, that the alpine Laplanders are more honest, as well as more good-natured, than those who dwell in the woodlands. Having acquired more polish from their occasional intercourse with the inhabitants of towns, the latter have, at the same time, learned more cunning and deceit, and are frequently very knavish. The inhabitants of the alps dwell in villages formed of their tents, living together, as I have already related, in great comfort and harmony. Those who occupy the woody parts of the country live dispersed.
The Laplanders know no musical instrument except the lur (a sort of trumpet), and pipes made of the bark of the quicken tree or mountain ash. They are not accustomed to sing at church, except those who are reckoned among the great or learned of the community.
The inhabitants of this country are not more troubled with chilblains than those of other places. They do not mind
having their cheeks frost-bitten. The women wear an embroidered band round the head, which affords no protection in this respect; but the men have a loose band of skin with the hair on, which can be pulled down occasionally over their cap, when the cold is intolerable.
(But to proceed with a further account of the diversions of the people I am describing).
Spetto, one of their games, is played, by men as well as women, in the following manner. They prepare from thirty to fifty or sixty pieces of wood, a hand's breadth in length, which are spread upon the extended skin of a reindeer. One of the players takes a ball made of stone or marble, larger than a boy's playing marble, which he throws up into the air about an ell high. While the ball is up, he snatches away one of the sticks, but in such a manner as not to miss catching the ball in its fall, holding the stick in the same hand. He subsequently gathers together,