TRAVELS 
56 
mountains, never approach near enough to civilized focieties to 
acquire any ideas of their form and conftitution. Free by nature^ 
their manner of living exempts them from the neceffity of laws. 
They dwell in a country which cannot be inhabited by any other 
race of mortals. They feed their rein-deer with a vegetable re¬ 
jected by every other animal. Their only fociety confifts in the 
union of a few families drawn together partly by common wants, 
and partly by focial affedion : and when two fuch families, with 
their herds, chance to meet on the fame fpot, there is land enough 
for the one to accoft the other in the words of Abraham to 
Lot:—“ If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the 
“ right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to 
“ the left.” 
It was not without extreme difficulty that we were able to 
perfuade our Laplanders that we were neither kings nor commif- 
faries, nor priells, but only private individuals who were travel¬ 
ling from mere curiofity. The principle of curiofity, which exffis 
only in cultivated minds, and which is derived either from felf- 
intereft, in fearch of fomething that may be advantageous, or from 
the pride of knowing more than other men, or from a defire of 
comparing what is already known with fome object or objeds not 
yet known—this principle is obvioufly too abflrufe, and can in 
no wife enter into the head of a roving Laplander. During the 
whole of our intercourfe with thefe people, we could never dis¬ 
cover among them the fmalleft fign of any fentiment of religion 
or devotion. They never offered up any prayer to the Deity 
when 
