250 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
helmet worn by the lady; and the knife and sporran 
fastened to their belts, instead of being suspended 
in front as hers were, hung down against their hips. 
Their tunics, too, may have been a trifle shorter. None 
of the three were beautiful. High cheek-bones, short 
noses, oblique Mongol eyes, no eyelashes, and enormous 
mouths, composed a cast of features which their burnt- 
sienna complexion, and hair—like ill-got-in hay—did 
not much enhance. The expression of their coun¬ 
tenances was not unintelligent; and there was a merry, 
half-timid, half-cunning twinkle in their eyes, which 
reminded me a little of faces I had met with in the 
more neglected districts of Ireland. Some ethnologists, 
indeed, are inclined to reckon the Laplanders as a branch 
of the Celtic family. Others, again, maintain them to 
be Ugrians ; while a few pretend to discover a relation¬ 
ship between the Lapp language and the dialects of the 
Australian savages, and similar outsiders of the human 
family; alleging that as successive stocks bubbled up 
from the central birthplace of mankind in Asia, the 
earlier and inferior races were gradually driven outwards 
in concentric circles, like the rings produced by the 
throwing of a stone into a pond ; and that, consequently, 
