The fire-places here were furnished with a regular apparatus for boiling the kettle. The Laplanders in general content themselves for this purpose with a large stick, which they place obliquely in the ground, so as to lean over the fire, and on which they suspend either a kettle or a fish; but here they have adopted quite another mode. [Illustration] A square beam (a) is placed perpendicularly, so as to be turned upon a pivot at its base. To this a transverse beam (b) is fixed by a peg or joint, so that its extremity may be moved up or down, and teeth are cut in this beam, to hang the kettle upon, at a greater or less distance from the upright support. Underneath is another shorter piece of wood (c), forked at the extremity to catch the lower teeth of the last-mentioned beam, and fixed likewise by a joint at its base, in order to be elevated more or less at pleasure. The advantages of this contrivance are many. 1, the materials cost nothing, whereas any iron machinery is expensive. 2, here is no waste, for iron may be employed to more important purposes. 3, this is capable of being raised higher or lower according as the height of the fire may require, which an iron trivet cannot. 4, the iron trivet is troublesome to move about, which this machine does not require. 5, when the trivet happens to lose one of its feet, it is no longer of any use. 6, the circular part of the iron trivet must be proportioned to the size of the kettle it is to support, but this machine will hold any sized kettle. The fields in this part of the country are excellent, being extensive and level, the soil consisting of sandy and argillaceous earth. The crops are abundant, provided the corn be not injured by frost, as it had been the preceding year. Owing to this misfortune, I found bread made of spruce fir bark at present in general use. The Buckbean (_Menyanthes trifoliata_) is very seldom used, on account of its bitterness[44]. [44] Linnæus in the _Flora Lapponica, ed. 2. 53_, tells us that "in times of extreme scarcity the roots of this plant, dried and powdered, are mixed with a small quantity of meal, and serve to make the miserable bread of the poorer settlers in Lapland, which is extremely bitter and detestable." In the same work, _p. 259_, he describes an excellent kind of bread made of the roots of _Calla palustris_, which though acrid when fresh, become wholesome if dried, and boiled afterwards in water, as is the case with its near relation our common _Arum_, and the _Jatropha Manihot_, or Casava, of the West Indies. Flax is scarcely ever cultivated here.