The reason why the marshes prove barren, after the grass has been mown, is easily explained by considering the nature of the rushy plants, whose roots extend themselves gradually upwards, and choke the _Carices_ and other grasses, when the latter are cut down to the ground, so that their roots wither. Might this evil be cured by burning?
I wondered that the Laplanders hereabouts had not built a score of small houses, lofty enough at least to be entered in an upright posture, as they have such abundance of wood at hand. On my expressing my surprise at this, they answered: "In summer we are in one spot, in winter at another, perhaps twenty miles distant, where we can find moss for our reindeer." I asked "why they did not collect this moss in the summer, that they might have a supply of it during the winter frosts?" They replied, that they give their whole attention to fishing in summer time, far from the places where this moss abounds and where they reside in winter.
These people eat a great deal of flesh meat. A family of four persons consumes at least one reindeer every week, from the time when the preserved fish becomes too stale to be eatable, till the return of the fishing season. Surely they might manage better in this respect than they do. When the Laplander in summer catches no fish, he must either starve, or kill some of his reindeer. He has no other cattle or domestic animals than the reindeer and the dog: the latter cannot serve him for food in his rambling excursions; but whenever he can kill Gluttons (_Mustela Gulo_), Squirrels, Martins, Bears or Beavers, in short any thing except Foxes and Wolves, he devours them. His whole sustenance is derived from the flesh of these animals, wild fowl, and the reindeer, with fish and water. A Laplander, therefore, whose family consists of four persons, including himself, when he has no other meat, kills a reindeer every week, three of which are equal to an ox; he consequently consumes about thirty of those animals in the course of the winter, which are equal to ten oxen, whereas a single ox is sufficient for a Swedish peasant.
The peasants settled in this neighbourhood, in time of scarcity eat chaff, as well as the inner bark of pine trees separated from the scaly cuticle. They grind and then bake it in order to render it fit for food. A part is reserved for their cattle, being cut obliquely into pieces of two fingers' breadth, by which the fodder of the cows, goats, and sheep is very much spared. The bark is collected at the time when the sap rises in the tree, and, after being dried in the sun, is kept for winter use. They grind it into meal, bake bread of it, and make grains to feed swine upon, which render those animals extremely fat, and save a great deal of corn.