BARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIF. 



229 



offers, to rob the much-enduring nomad by shooting 

 one of his deer, perchance from a boat, as it is 

 grazing on the margin of a river or lake. Yet more 

 persistently, if less fatally hostile, is the broms, a fly 

 whose larva, hatched from eggs laid in the deer's 

 skin, fill it with perforations ; and even worse are the 

 attacks of the myggs, or mosquitoes, whose hosts, 

 armed with tormenting, blood-imbibing stings, as the 

 summer advances gather in clouds, and drive the 

 herds and their masters up to snowy altitudes for 

 refuge and relief. The eagle, soaring on ampler 

 wing, snatches not rarely a fawn for its nested young ; 

 the ponderous bear, lying in ambush, secures at 

 intervals an elder of the herd ; and far more fre- 

 quently, by similarly lurking under covert, the 

 crafty, insatiable glutton, with claws and teeth hard 

 and sharp as steel, succeeds in springing upon the 

 neck of an antlered victim and drinking its blood. 

 Next to the wolf, and even in some times and places 

 more than the wolf, it is the most destructive north- 

 ern beast of prey ; for it is, more than other beasts, 

 the plague of the cattle-farmer as well as the Lapp. 

 Nevertheless, the wolf is the arch-enemy of the 

 reindeer, and as such is held in utter detestation by 

 the Lapp, who seizes every chance of wreaking 

 vengeance on the ravager of his herds. According 

 to old Lappish traditions, this ravenous beast was 

 not created by a beneficent being, but by Perkel the 

 devil, who endowed it, above all other animals, with 

 swiftness of foot. God, however, to check its speed, 

 added the bushy tail, by throwing after it a twig of 

 spruce fir. 



The bitter exasperation of the Lapp against the 

 wolf is not to be wondered at when we consider the 

 labour and the loss to which from time immemorial 

 his hereditary enemy has subjected! him, and still 

 subjects. Summer and winter, day and night, he 

 with his faithful dog must be on the alert, guarding 

 the herd. " Indescribable," says Professor Friis, 

 "what the Lapp endures thus watching. When 

 darkness is deepest, cold bitterest, snowstorm fear- 

 fulest, he must be on the watch. At least every 

 quarter of an hour he must take his round, hallooing, 

 screaming, and making all manner of loud outcries ; 

 for thus the wolf, though only when not very hungry, 

 can be kept aloof." Should he once sleep at his 

 post, the wolf, more watchful than himself, would 

 presently wet his fangs with the blood of a deer. A 

 single wolf, slaughtering like a fiend incarnate, for 

 the love of slaughter, far beyond the needs of 

 appetite, has been known to kill thirty deer in one 

 night ; and, as stated by the above-named author 

 (E7t Sommer i Finmarken, Russisk Lapland og 

 Nordkarelen), from two or three, up to that number, 

 m.iy be lost in a night notwithstanding the strictest 

 watch ; while possibly a man, rich in the even- 

 ing, with several hundred reindeer, may in the 

 morning be a beggar ; his herd destroyed, hunted 

 over precipices, and dispersed far and wide by a 



numerous pack of wolves, some falling into the hands 

 of thieves, and the rest of the living never, by the 

 most strenuous efforts, to be wholly collected together 

 again. 



Consideration of such facts leads us to excuse the 

 implacable animosity, if not the barbarous cruelty, 

 directed by the Lapp against the wolf. Not only 

 does he give no quarter to the enemy when it falls 

 under his power alive, but, like a cat playing with a 

 mouse, he tortures it awhile before killing it out- 

 right. Fleet as the wolf is on firm ground — and its 

 name in Lappish is synonymous with quick — when 

 ■ deep and loose snow impedes its progress, it is often 

 outrun by the gliding Lapp, who thereupon strikes 

 with his heav}' staff a blow on the small of its back, 

 which compels it to sit instantly and immovably on 

 the ground. A sudden thrust at the heart, with the 

 spear-end of the staff, would now terminate the 

 creature's misery ; but that were scarce sufficient 

 gratification for the heated and exasperated pursuer's 

 love of revenge. If there are other wolves to be 

 followed, he perhaps leaves his victim awhile, 

 secured by its broken back, and renews the chase ; if 

 not, he awaits his lagging comrades, and with them, 

 when they gather round the deliquent in a ring, 

 arraign him in open court, constituting themselves 

 accusers, witnesses and judges all in one. His 

 doom is predetermined, and they have only, as 

 executioners, to enjoy the pleasures of the wild 

 justice called revenge. They denounce him in the 

 most violent of abusive terms ; they beat and pommel 

 him, and prick him with the point of their spears ; 

 they swear at him ; they ban him with the most 

 fearful curses their language, copious in such phrase- 

 ology, can supply ; they upbraid him with all the 

 mischief he and his progenitors throughout all time 

 have ever wrought ; and finally, amid shouts of 

 exultation, they put him to death in a manner most 

 calculated to inflict severest pain. 



Such, till recently, was a common practice among 

 the Mountain-Lapps : but the present writer was in- 

 formed a few years since, by a Swedish clergyman, on 

 the authority of a section of those nomads, with whom 

 at intervals he comes in contact, that the custom was 

 greatly on the decrease, passing away before the 

 more genial influences and superior enlightenment, 

 which for some time past have been brought to bear 

 on the raw, untutored minds of these hardy, isolated 

 children of the mountain wilds. 



The Lapp rarely shoots the wolf, in Sweden 

 never ; he prefers, as a surer weapon than the gun, 

 the use of the staff with which he propels himself on 

 his snow-shoes ; and which, to serve both purposes, is 

 formed of a very stout and straight branch of birch- 

 tree, barked and smoothed, provided — in one case 

 seen by the writer — at the upper end with a long, 

 pointed iron spike, firmly secured by a large and 

 strong brass ferule, enclosed in a sheaf of reindeer 

 horn ; and at the lower end with an iron spike eight 



