In winter, the Laplanders, clothe themselves with the skin of the rein-deer, and in summer with the skins of birds. To the uses of linen they are utter strangers. The women of Nova-Zembla have the nose and ears pierced, and ornament them with pendants of blue stone; and to add a lustre to their charms, they form blue streaks upon their forehead and chin. The men wear no hair on the head, and cut their beards round. The Greenland women dress themselves with the skin of the dog-fish: they also paint their faces with blue and yellow, and wear pendants in their ears. They all live underground, or in huts almost so, covered with the bark of trees, or the bones of fishes. Some of them form subterraneous trenches, from one hut to another, by which, during the winter months, they can enjoy the society of their neighbours without going out. A continued series of darkness for several months obliges them to illuminate their dreary abodes with lamps, in which they burn the same train oil they use as drink. In summer they have scarcely more comfort than in winter, being obliged to live perpetually in a thick smoke, which is the only device they have contrived for the destruction of gnats, which are perhaps more numerous in these regions of frost, than in those of the most scorching heat. Under all these hardships they are subject to few diseases, and they live to a prodigious age. So vigorous indeed are the old men, that they are hardly to be distinguished from the young. The only infirmity they experience is that of blindness, which is very common among them. Perpetually dazzled by the strong reflection of the snow in winter, and enveloped in clouds of smoke in summer, few when advanced in years are found to retain the use of their eyes. As all the different tribes or nations, therefore, resemble each other in form, in shape, in colour, in manners, and even in oddity of customs, they are undoubtedly of the same race of men. The practice of offering their women to strangers, and of being pleased when they are thought worthy of caresses, may proceed from a consciousness of their own deformity as well as that of their women. In appearance, the woman, whom a stranger has accepted, they afterwards respect for her superior beauty. At any rate it is certain, although remote from each other, and separated by a great sea, the custom is general in all the above countries. We even meet with it among the Crim Tartars, the Calmucks, and among several other nations of Siberia and of Tartary, where personal deformity is almost as conspicuous as in those of the North. In all the neighbouring nations, on the other hand, as in China, and in Persia[C], where the women are remarkable for beauty, the men are also remarkable for jealousy.