He is no less expert as a sledger. His vehicle, or _pulka_, is fashioned like a boat, with a convex bottom, so as to slip over the snow with all the greater ease; the prow is sharp and pointed, but the hind part flat. Perhaps it may better be compared to a punt than a boat. At all events, in this curious vehicle the Lapp is bound and swathed, like an infant in its cradle. To preserve its equilibrium, he trusts to the dexterity with which he moves his body to and fro, and from side to side, as may be needed; and he guides it by means of a stout pole. His steed, a reindeer, is fastened to it by traces attached to its collar, and connected with the fore part of the sledge; the reins are twisted round its horns; and all about its trappings are hung a number of little bells, in the tintinnabulation of which the animal greatly delights. Thus accoutred, it will perform a journey of fifty or sixty miles a day; sometimes travelling fifty miles without pause, and with no other refreshment than an occasional mouthful of snow. [Illustration: TRAVELLING IN LAPLAND.] With wonderful accuracy the Lapp will guide himself and his steed through a seemingly labyrinthine wilderness, when the usual signs and characters of the landscape are buried deep in snow. But his memory is tenacious, and a blighted tree, or a projecting crag, or a clump of firs, affords him a sufficient indication of the correctness of his course. He frequently continues his rapid journey throughout the night, when the moon invests the gleaming plains with a strange brilliancy, or the aurora fills both earth and heaven with the reflection of its wondrous fires. A French traveller, M. de Saint-Blaize, is of opinion that the Lapps, like all savage and semi-civilized races, are rapidly diminishing in numbers. Yet this diminution is hardly owing to the conditions under which they live. Their life, to the civilized European, seems severe and almost intolerable; but though it is marked by privation and fatigue, it is not without its charms. It is free and independent, and without anxiety. As for the privation and fatigue, the Lapp is hardly conscious of them, because his capacity of endurance is great, and he is accustomed to them from his earliest years. Temperate, active, and inured to exertion, his physical frame is wonderfully vigorous, and he knows nothing of the majority of maladies which afflict the dweller in cities. One terrible disease, indeed, he does not escape, and this may have had much to do with their decline,--the smallpox. Otherwise, they are a healthy as well as a hardy race. If during a journey a Lapp woman gives birth to a child, she places the new-born in a frame of hollow wood, in which a hole has been cut to receive the little one’s head; then slings this rude cradle on her back, and continues her march. When she halts, she suspends the infant and its cradle to a tree, the wirework with which it is covered affording a sufficient protection against wild beasts.