The Woodland Caribou^ 7^ 



reindeer, and in 1G90, one animal is affirmed to have drawn an officer, with 

 important despatches, eight hundred miles in forty-eight hours. 



In Forester's Game in its season, the author gives a very lively des- 

 cription of the Caribou, having reference to this species, lie states that 

 ** as regards the nature of the pelage, or fur, for it is almost such, of the 

 Caribou, so far from its being remarkable for closeness and compactness, it 

 is by all odds the loosest and longest haired of any deer I ever saw ; being, 

 particularly about the head and neck^ so shaggy as to appear almost maned. 



" In color, it is the most grizzly of deer, and though comparatively dark 

 brown on the back, the hide is generally speaking, light, almost dun-colored , 

 and on the head and neck fulvous, or tawny gray, largely mixed wdth white 

 hairs. 



" The fiesh is said to l^e delicious ; and the leather made by the Indians- 

 from its skin, by their peculiar process, is of unsurpassed excellence for leg- 

 gins, moccasins or the like ; especially for the moccasin to be used under 

 snow-shoes. 



" As to its habits, while the Lapland or Siberian Eeindeer is the tamest 

 and most docile of its genus, the American Caribou is the fiercest, fleetest, 

 wildest, shyest, and most untameable. So much so, that they are rarely 

 pursued by white hunters, or shot by them, except through casual good 

 fortune ; Indians alone having the patience and instinctive craft, which 

 enables them to crawl on them unseen, unsmelt — for the nose of the Caribou 

 C4T,n detect the smallest taint upon the air of anything human at least two 

 miles up wind of him — and unsuspected. If he takes alarm and starts off on 

 the run, no one dreanis of pursuing. As well pursue the 'svind, of which no 

 man knoweth whence it cometh or whether it goeth. Snow-shoes against 

 him alone avail little, for propped up on the broad, natural snow-shoes of 

 his long, elastic pasterns and wide cleft clacking hoofs, he shoots over the 

 crust of the deepest drifts, unbroken ; in which the lordly moose would soon 

 flounder, shoulder deep, if hard pressed, and the graceful deer would fall 

 despairing, and bleat in vain for mercy — but he, the ship of the winter wil- 

 derness, outspeeds the wind among his native pines and tamaracks — even as 

 the desert ship, the dromedary, out-trots the red simoon on the terrible 

 Zahara — and once started, may be seen no more by human eyes, nor run 

 down by fleetest feet of man, no, not if they pursue him from their nightly- 

 casual camps, unwearied, following his trail by the day, by the week, by the 

 month, till a fresh snow effiices his tracks, and leaves the hunter at the last,. 

 as he was at the first of the chase ; less only the fatigue, the disappointment' 

 and the folly. 



Therefore, by woodsmen, whether white or red skinned, he is followed 

 only on those rare occasions when snows of unusual depth are crusted over 

 to the very point at which they will not quite support this fleet and power- 

 ful stag. Then the toil is too great even for his vast endurance, and he can 

 be run down by the speed of men, inured to the sport, and to the hardships 

 of the wilderness, but by them only. Indians by hundreds in the provinces, 

 and many loggers and hunters in the Eastern States, can take and keep his 



