S2 THE LAPLAND ALPS. 



stroyed ^vith the nails, these people having 

 no firelock to shoot them with*. 



I was informed that in this neighbour- 

 hood the inoculated small-pox is remark- 

 ably fatal. If the patients have but seventy 

 or eighty pustules, they die of it as of the 

 plague. They fly to the mountains, when 

 infected, and die. The same is the case 

 with the measles. It appears that both 

 these diseases are aggravated by the vio- 

 lent cold, whence the patients die in so 

 miserable a manner -f. 



Swelled necks (goitres) are frequent. 



Sore eyes are universal, especially in the 

 spring, when the Laplanders remove to- 

 wards the Alps. The glittering of the 

 snow has then a pernicious effect on their 

 eyes. Aged people are very often blind. 



* This strange passage is presumed to allude to a 

 little gun, four or five inches long, still shown in the 

 arsenal at Stockholm, with which vulgar report says 

 the famous Queen Christina used to kill fleas. 



t It is not impossible that Linnaeus might be mis- 

 led here by the prejudices of his time, or by those of 

 the people from whom he obtained his account. 



