CHAP. xiii. THE CHASE OF THE CARIBOU. 217 



weather. The best time is the latter end of February or 

 the beginning of March ; the best weather is when a 

 light fresh snow of some three or four inches has fallen 

 on the top of deep drifts and a solid crust the fresh 

 snow giving the means for following the trail the firm 

 crust yielding a support to the broad snow-shoes, and 

 enabling the stalkers to trail with silence and celerity 

 combined. Then they crawl onward, breathless and 

 voiceless, up wind always, following the foot-prints of the 

 wandering, pasturing, wantoning deer ; judging by signs 

 umnistaken to the veteran hunter, undistinguishable to the 

 novice, of the distance or proximity of their game, until 

 they steal upon the herd unsuspected, and either finish the 

 day with a sure shot and a triumphant whoop, or discover 

 that the game has taken alarm and started on the jump, 

 and so give it up in despair. 



'One man perhaps in a thousand can still hunt or stalk 

 caribou in the summer season. He, when he has dis- 

 covered a herd feeding up wind, at a leisure pace and 

 clearly unalarmed, stations a comrade in close ambush 

 well down wind and to leeward of their upward track, 

 and then himself, after closely observing their mood, 

 motions, and hue of course, strikes off in a wide circle 

 well to leeward, until he has got a mile or two ahead of 

 the herd, when, very slowly and guardedly, observing the 

 profoundest silence, he cuts across their direction, and 

 gives them his wind, as it is technically termed, dead 

 head. This is the crisis of the affair ; if he gives the 

 wind too strongly or too rashly, if he makes the slightest 

 noise or motion, they scatter in an instant, and away. 

 If he gives it slightly, gradually, and casually as it were, 



