summer, or to pools in the the middle of the vast fields of ice.

Yet, even here, Flora deigns to make a short visit, and to scatter a scanty stock over the bases of the hills: her efforts never rise beyond a few humble herbs, which shoot, flower, and seed, in the short warmth of June and July, and then wither into rest until the succeeding year. Among these, however, the salubrious scurvygrass, the resource of distempered frames, is providentially most abundant.

Such, after all, is the aspect of extreme sterility and desolation in these dreary regions, that we can scarcely imagine any mortal would be so hardy as to make them even a temporary abode. Yet here did four Russian mariners, who were accidentally left on this frozen coast in the year 1743, live six years (one excepted), till happily released by the arrival of a ship. In 1633, seven Dutch sailors were voluntarily left here to pass the winter, and to make their remarks; but they all perished from the effects of the scurvy. In the following year, seven more self-devoted victims of the same nation underwent a similar fate; yet all these adventurous men had been liberally provided with medicines, and every necessary for the preservation of life. Eight Englishmen, left by accident in the same country, in 1650, were far more fortunate: unprovided with every thing, they contrived, however, to frame a hut of some old materials, and were found by the returning ships, the next year in perfect health. The Russians have attempted to colonize these dreadful islands. They have annually sent parties to continue there the whole year, who have established settlements at Spitzbergen and other places adjacent, where they have built huts, each of which is occupied by two boats' crews, or twenty-six men,

They bring with them salted fish, rye-flour, and the serum or whey of sour milk. The whey is their chief beverage, and is also used in baking their bread. Each hut has an oven, which serves also as a stove; and their fuel is wood, which they bring with them from Archangel. Their huts are above ground, and surprisingly warm. They boil their fish with water and rye-meal: this is their winter diet. In summer, they live chiefly on fowls, or their eggs. They are dressed in the skins of the bear or the reindeer, with the fur side next their bodies; their bedding, likewise, is formed of the same. The skin of the fox, which is the most valuable, is preserved as an article of commerce. They have also other employment beside the chase, in catching, with nets, the beluga, or white whale. Few of them die from the severity of the cold; but they are often frost-bitten, so as to lose their toes or fingers; for they are so hardy as to hunt in all weathers. They are at liberty to leave the place by the 22d of September, whether they are relieved by a fresh party from Russia, or not. The great exercise they use; their vegetable food; their method of freshening their salt provision, by boiling it in water, and mixing it with flour; their beverage of whey; and their total abstinence from spirituous liquors; are the happy preservatives from the scurvy, which brought all the preceding adventurers, who perished, to their miserable end.

Where the countries have been long inhabited, in all the arctic coasts of Europe, Asia, and America, the natives, with very few variations and exceptions, seem to be a distinct species both in body and mind, and not to be derived from the adjacent nations, or any of their better proportioned neighbours. Their stature is from four to four feet and a half; their skins swarthy, and their

hair short, black, and coarse. Their eyes are transversely narrow, and the irides black. They have great heads, high cheek-bones, wide mouths, thick lips, broad chests, slender waists, and spindle shanks. From use, they run up rocks like goats, and up trees like squirrels. They are so strong in the arm, that they can draw a bow which a stout Norwegian can hardly bend; yet lazy even to torpidity, when not incited by necessity; and pusillanimous and nervous to a hysterical degree. These are the natives of Finmark and Lapland. The coasts east of Archangel, as far as the river Oby, are inhabited by the Samoeids; a race as short as the Laplanders, but much uglier, and more brutalized; their food being the carcases of horses, or any other animals. They use the reindeer to draw their sledges, but are not civilized enough to make it a substitute for the cow.

Hard by these shores, where scarce his freezing stream
Rolls the wild Oby, live the last of men;

And half-enlivened by the distant Sun,
That rears and ripens man as well as plants,
Here human nature wears its rudest form.
Deep from the piercing season sunk in caves,
Here, by dull fires, and with unjoyous cheer,
They waste the tedious gloom. Immersed in furs,
Doze the gross race. Nor sprightly jest, nor song,
Nor tenderness they know ; nor aught of life,
Beyond the kindred bears that stalk without.
Till morn, at length, her roses drooping all,
Sheds a long twilight brightening o'er their fields,
And calls the quivered savage to the chase.

THOMSON.

Such are the inhabitants of the greatest part of the polar regions, and such is the situation, which, to our imaginations, may appear insupportable. With the deepest veneration for the dispensations of divine Providence, a humane mind may sometimes be apt to inquire, why the benevolent Creator should have destined such deplorable

scenes of desolation to be the abode of millions of human beings, while others are blessed with temperate climates and smiling skies, with inexhaustable harvests and superfluous profusion? But good and evil are often merely relative ideas; and much of what we call happiness on the one hand, and misery on the other, exists less in reality than sentiment. In the Laplanders, for instance, the hardy temperament of their bodies, calculated to resist the rigour of their climate; the furry nations' with which their woods abound, and whose skins protect them from the cold; and that peculiar blessing of these regions, the reindeer; are so many evidences, that Divine Goodness has afforded them many valuable compensations for all the disadvantages under which they labour.

They ask no more than simple nature gives;
They love their mountains, and enjoy their storms.
No false desires, no pride-created wants,
Disturb the peaceful current of their time;
And through the restless ever-tortured maze
Of pleasure, or ambition, bid it rage.

There reindeer form their riches. These their tents,
Their robes, their beds, and all their homely wealth
Supply, their wholesome fare, and cheerful cups.
Obsequious at their call, the docile tribe

Yield to the sledge their necks, and whirl them swift
O'er hill and dale, heaped into one expanse
Of marbled snow, as far as eye can sweep,
With a blue crust of ice unbounded glazed.
By dancing meteors then, that ceaseless shake
A waving blaze refracted o'er the heavens,
And vivid moons and stars that keener play
With double lustre from the glossy waste,
Even in the depth of polar night, they find
A wondrous day; enough to light the chase,
Or guide their daring steps to Finland-fairs.
Wished Spring returns; and from the hazy south,
While dim Aurora slowly moves before,
The welcome Sun, just verging up at first,
By small degrees extends the swelling curve!
Till seen, at last for gay rejoicing months,

Still round and round, the spiral course he winds,
And, as he nearly dips his flaming orb,
Wheels up again, and reascends the sky.
In that glad season from the lakes and floods,
Where pure Niemi's fairy mountains rise,
And, fringed with roses 2, Tenglio rolls his stream,
They draw the copious fry. With these at eve,
They cheerful loaded to their tents repair;
Where, all day long in useful cares employed,
Their kind unblemished wives the fire prepare.
Thrice happy race! by poverty secured
From legal plunder and rapacious power:
In whom fell interest never yet has sown

The seeds of vice: whose spotless swains ne'er knew
Injurious deed, nor, blasted by the breath

Of faithless love, their blooming daughters woe.

THOMSON.

A celebrated writer has some observations, which beautifully illustrate this subject. Of the happiness and misery,' says he, of our present state, part arises from our sensations, and part from our opinions; part is distributed by nature, and part is, in a great measure, apportioned by ourselves. Positive pleasure we cannot always obtain, and positive pain we often cannot remove. No man can give to his own plantations the fra grance of the Indian groves; nor will any precepts of philosophy enable him to withdraw his attention from wounds or diseases. But the negative infelicity, which proceeds not from the pressure of

1 M. de Maupertuis, in his book on the Figure of the Earth, after having described the beautiful lake and mountain of Niemi in Lapland, says,- From this height we had the opportunity, several times, to see those vapours rise from the lake, which the people of the country call Haltios, and which they deem to be the guardian spirits of the mountains. We had been frighted with stories of bears that haunted this place, but saw none. It seemed rather a place of resort for fairies and genii, than bears.'

2 The same author observes,-'I was surprized to see upon the banks of this river (the Tenglio) roses of as lively a red as any that are in our gardens.'