speaking, little drunkenness amongst them; and as to the negroes on the coast, the author has been told by friends who have resided there for periods varying from five to fifteen years, that they have never seen one intoxicated. But inasmuch as the importation of rum continues to be enormous, and the greater part of it is forwarded inland, it is clear that if drunkenness is to be found anywhere (and it is known to the missionaries to exist), it must be amongst those savages who are removed from the influences of civilisation. The unbridled passion of the savage for intoxicating drink, whether he be the savage of the back-woods or of the city, as compared with the same quality in a man of culture, has been forcibly put by one of our leading historians. Alison says[15] that an Iroquois, when he sits down beside a cask of spirits, often inserts a straw into a hole which he has bored in the wood, and sucks the intoxicating draught until he drops down dead, whilst a gentleman, with a good cellar of champagne, falls into no such excesses, because he has other enjoyments which are inconsistent with or prove a counterpoise to the first seductions of sense. He (the historian) goes on to show by figures that drunkenness is essentially a savage vice.[16] Whilst in 1838 the spirits consumed in England was about half-a-gallon (strictly 0.53) per head of the population, in Ireland it was 1.32, in Scotland 2.46, and in Australia 5.02 gallons per head. These figures have changed materially since 1838, but the principle remains the same. Only last year the author had a practical example of its operation. In the course of a tour in Norway, he had occasion to stay two or three days at Tromsoe, a small town on the coast within the Arctic circle. Whilst there, he visited in the vicinity an encampment of Laplanders, known as the “Summer Lapps,” from the fact of their descending from the higher lands to the coast at that season in search of pasture for their reindeer. To tourists, who only pay them a passing visit, they seem a very interesting race, but to the people of the town, which they frequent almost daily, they are a great nuisance. Their habits are very intemperate, and the author was told that it is by no means unusual for one of the men to drink a tumblerful of raw spirit at a draught, and almost immediately to sink down intoxicated, and that, to them, is the height of enjoyment.