We borrow from Count D’Alviella a few particulars relating to the stationary Lapps, who inhabit the region of West Bothnia, or Westerbotten, a long, narrow strip of land dividing the Gulf of Bothnia from Lapland proper. These Lapps seem to be the product of a mixture of races in which the Scandinavian element predominates. They are of an ordinary stature, robust, with regular features, light hair, and clear gray eyes. The country in which they dwell has a strange, an original, but a monotonous character. It is its monotony which wearies the traveller, though at first he will be impressed by its fresh yet severe beauty. The forests of birch and fir seem endless, and the great lakes in their depths fatigue the eye with their wastes of cold, drear water. Occasionally, however, the traveller comes upon a smiling plain, enamelled with myosotis, and brightened by a silver-shining, music-murmuring stream. Here and there the wood is thinner, and lean cows may be seen feeding among the half-stripped stems. Next comes a clearing, where the forest has been swept away by fire; a clearing with fields of rye and barley; a palisade enclosure, and a group of châlets, with a comparatively spacious and undilapidated building in the centre. These _gârds_, as they are called, closely resemble each other throughout the North. Neither material nor space is begrudged to the West Bothnian architects. Even the smallest farm comprises three or four buildings, which generally form a square on the four sides of an inner court. These buildings--how unlike the wretched, filthy hut of the nomadic Lapp!--comprise three living-rooms, kitchen, and stables; and are divided from each other only by a partition of horizontally-laid planks, the interstices being filled up by moss. The furniture is simple, convenient, suitable, and shining with cleanliness, like a Dutch kitchen. Around the hearth is hung a series of brightly-coloured prints, representing either a Scriptural scene or events in the life of an illustrious personage,--King Charles XV., or the bishop of the diocese, side by side with the universal legendary figures, Napoleon I. and Garibaldi. Close by stands the old hereditary locker, in which the husband accumulates his money and the wife deposits her trinkets; to the wall is suspended a complete trophy of knives, pipes, belts with silver buckles, sledge-bells, and a whip with a carved horn handle. The whole scene is one of order and the proprieties of family life.