Among the Fjall Lapps there are many rich owners of 1000 or 1500 reindeer, 300 of which fully suffice for the maintenance of a family. In this case the owner is able to kill as many as are necessary for providing his household with food and raiment, while the sale of the superfluous skins and horns enables him to purchase cloth, flour, hardware, and other necessary articles--not to forget the tobacco or the brandy in which he delights. The price of the entire carcass of a reindeer, skin and all, varies from one to three dollars Norsk (four shillings and sixpence to thirteen shillings and sixpence). A fine skin will always sell for one dollar in any part of the North. It will thus be seen that a Lapp possessing a herd of 500 or 1000 deer is virtually a capitalist in every sense of the word, far richer than the vast majority of his Norwegian, Swedish, or Russian fellow-subjects, although they all affect to look upon him with supreme contempt. The daily food of the mountain Laplanders consists of the fattest reindeer venison, which they boil, and eat with the broth in which it has been cooked. Their summer diet consists of cheese and reindeer-milk. The rich also eat bread baked upon hot iron plates. Their mode of killing the reindeer is the method used by the butchers in the South of Italy--the most ancient and best method of slaying cattle, because it is attended with the least pain to the animal, and the greatest profit to its possessor. They thrust a sharp-pointed knife into the back part of the head between the horns, so as to divide the spinal marrow from the brain. The beast instantly drops, and dies without a groan or struggle. As soon as it falls, and appears to be dead, the Laplander plunges the knife dexterously behind the off-shoulder into the heart; then opening the animal, its blood is found in the stomach, and ladled out into a pot. Boiled with fat and flour, it is a favorite dish. An important epoch in the life of the Fjall Lapp is his annual visit to one of the winter fairs held in the chief towns or villages which the more industrious Swedes, Norwegians, or Fins have founded on the coasts here and there, or in the well-watered valleys of his fatherland, and which he attends frequently from an immense distance. After a slight duty to Government has been paid, business begins; but as every bargain is ratified with a full glass of brandy, his thoughts get confused before the day is half over--a circumstance which the cunning merchant does not fail to turn to account. On awaking the next morning, the vexation of the nomad at his bad bargains is so much the greater, as no people are more avowed mammon-worshippers than the Lapps, or more inclined to sing, with our Burns:-- O wae on the siller, it is sae prevailin’!