A REINDEER HIDE THROUGH LAPLAND. 39 



witness the slaughter of 500 deer his all; and he 

 was thus reduced by one fell stroke from comparative 

 affluence to poverty. Many such instances occur ; 

 and though it may be apparently reasonable and even 

 lawful to take such stringent measures, yet, taking 

 into account the extreme length and unguardedness of 

 the frontier, and the consequent temptation to trans- 

 gress which must come to a man whose moral sense, 

 on account of his training, is not of the highest, and 

 who knows that one thin imaginary line is all that 

 divides him and his hungry herds from the richest 

 pastures, taking all this into account, one cannot 

 help sympathising with the Norwegians, and feeling 

 that the Russian lawgivers might have made some 

 regulation more suitable to the race and country for 

 which it was intended. 



Thus it is but too certain that the Lapps are doomed. 

 Without religion, without art, without a single higher 

 or noble attribute, living merely for the day, and not 

 looking beyond it, how can they long continue to 

 block the way for more able workers in this earthly 

 beehive 1 Further to the north they cannot get, and, 

 therefore, silently and slowly they will disappear, and 

 vanish for ever from among the peoples of the earth, 

 leaving no mark behind them, and no sign to show 

 that they have been. 



