All the Lap huts I have seen are furnished with one or more small barrels, containing a supply of water for drinking. The utensils enumerated were set apart together on the long grass, close beside the fence, in the inner portion of the circle, and in their midst was placed another object, which I regarded with extreme interest, viz., _a child's cradle_! This was the last thing brought from the encampment, which then did not contain a living animal--men, women, children, and dogs, being one and all assembled in the inclosures. The cradle was ingeniously made entirely of reindeer-skin, shorn of hair, and, as it appeared to me, also hardened or tanned by some process. Its shape much resembled a huge shoe of the fashion of the middle ages, having a high back, and turned up at the foot or toe. It reminded me strongly of the bark cradles of the North American Indians, and was equally adapted to be slung at the mother's back on a journey, or to be hung up in a gamme, or on a tree, out of the reach of hungry dogs or prowling wolves. The head of the cradle was spanned by a narrow top, from which depended a piece of coarse common red check woolen stuff, drawn so tightly over the body of the cradle that one would have fancied the little creature in some danger of suffocation, and it was only by an occasional feeble struggle under the cloth, that I was apprised of the existence of a living creature beneath it. Evidently this cover was necessary, for I saw a huge musquito--the summer pest of the North--settle repeatedly upon it, as though longing to suck the blood of the innocent little prisoner.