106 THE LABRADOK PENINSULA. chai-. xxvir. 



of communicating intelligence to those who may follow 

 is universal among Indians ; but the excellent and simple 

 contrivance for describing the speed at which they travel 

 is not generally employed, as far as I am aware, by other 

 nations. The lodges of the Montagnais are almost always 

 made of birch-bark, so also are those of the western Nas- 

 quapees, except when the caribou are very numerous ; but 

 the eastern division of the tribe, those who hunt in the 

 neighbom^hood of Ungava, invariably make their lodges 

 of caribou or reindeer skins. It has been remarked in a 

 preceding chapter, that the caribou most common in 

 Labrador is the woodland species, an animal much larger 

 than the reindeer of the barren grounds of Norway and 

 Sweden. But it is clear from Cartwright's statement that 

 both kinds existed in his time on the Atlantic coast of 

 the Peninsula ; * and it is not improbable that in the 

 far interior, and towards Cape Wolsteinholme, the small 

 species may be abundant. 



In 1775 this energetic hunter, fur-trader, and fisher- 

 man found a reindeer stag's head and horns with seventy- 

 two points. He measured the length of the bound of 

 the caribou when at full speed, and found it to be sixteen 

 feet on an average. 



The Nasquapee arrow for killing the caribou is of 

 peculiar construction. The head is made of iron or copper 

 (formerly of bone), and consists of a piece of metal about 

 six inches long, beat out, pointed and barbed at one end ; 

 the other is let into and fastened to the shaft with sinew. 

 The head of the common arrow for kUling ptarmigan, 



* Cartwright's Sixteen Yeats on the Coast of Labrador, vol. ii. p. 376. 

 October 1778. 



