LAPLAND, AND LAND OF THE SAMOIDES. 71 
piece they warn off settlers in their midst. The women, 
looking anything but lovely in their sealskin tights and 
reindeer smocks, are infamous for magic and second sight. 
In every district of the north a female Lapp is feared as a 
witch—an enchautress, who keeps a devil at her side, bound 
-by the powers of darkness to obey her will. She can see 
into the coming day. She can bring a man ill luck. She 
can throw herself out into space,and work upon ships that 
are sailing past her on the sea. Far out in the polar brine, 
where her countrymen fish for cod, stands a lump of rock, 
which the crews regard as a woman and her child. 
‘Such phantasies are common in these Arctic seas where 
the waves wash in and out through the cliffs, and rend and 
carve them into wondrous shapes. A rock on the North 
Cape is the Friar; a group of islets near that cape is 
known as the Mother and her Daughters. Seen through 
the veil of Polar mist, a block of stone may take a 
mysterious form; and that lump of rock in the Polar 
waste, which the cod fishers say is like a woman with her 
child, has long been known to them as the Golden Hag. 
She is rarely seen; for the clouds in summer, and the 
snows in winter, hide her charms from the fisherman’s 
eyes; but when she deigns to show her face in the clear 
bright sun, her children hail her with a song of joy, for on 
seeing her face they know that their voyage will be blessed 
by a plentiful harvest of skins and fish. 
‘Woe to the mariner tossed upon their coast ! 
‘The land on our left is the Kanin Peninsula; part of 
that region of heath and sand over which the Samoyed 
roams; a desert of ice and snow still wilder than the 
countries hunted by the Lapp. A land without a village, 
without a road, without a field, without a name; for the 
Russians who own it have no name for it save that of the 
Samoyed’s land. This province of the great empire 
wends away north and east from the walls of Archangel, 
and the waters of the Kanin Cape to the summits of the 
Ural chain, and the iron gates of the Kara Sea. In her 
clefts and ridges snow never melts; and her shore- 
