The entire number of Laps now assembled could not be less than forty, men, women, and children included; and the three dogs had been joined by at least a score of their brethren. The men, generally, were attired in rough and ragged pæsks, either of reindeer-skin or of sheep-skin; the hair of the latter being worn inward, but of the former, outward. The women had all pæsks of cloth, but their appearance was so strikingly similar to that of the men, and the hair of both sexes hung down over the shoulders and shaded the face so much, that it was, in some cases, difficult, at the first glance, to distinguish the sex of the younger adults. The heads of the women were bare, and they all wore girdles of leather, studded with glittering brass ornaments, of which they are excessively proud. The men wore caps, as already described, and plain leather girdles, with a knife attached in a sheath, and in some instances the woman also wore a small knife. The children had miniature pæsks of sheep-skin, their only clothing. I had read of the generally diminutive stature of the Laplanders, and found them to be truly a dwarfish race. On an average the men did not appear to exceed five feet in height, and the women were considerably less. They were most of them very robust, however, and probably the circumference of their chest nearly equaled their height. The complexion of all was more or less tawny, their eyes light-colored, and their hair either reddish or auburn, and its dangling masses added much to the wildness of their aspect. Some of them wore mustaches and beards, but nature had apparently denied the majority such hirsute signs of manhood.