DRIVING SLEET. 265 



which we sank ankle-deep at every step, the 

 weather became simply awful. Shower after 

 shower of sleety rain, driven by a hurricane of 

 wind, constantly obscured the desolation of the 

 surrounding landscape, but as we were already 

 pretty well wet through we determined to 

 make a good round before returning to camp. 



After we had been walking slowly across the 

 wind for a couple of hours — you cannot go very 

 fast through a Newfoundland bog — we came 

 upon a single caribou — a young stag or a doe 

 Avith horns. We passed this animal and 

 presently saw several more upon the sky-line 

 to leeward. 



Leaving my companion behind, I approached 

 these to within three hundred yards behind a 

 few small bushes, and saw that there was a big 

 stag with them, but the wind-driven sleet was 

 beating into my face and I could not use my 

 binoculars nor make out his horns at all well 

 with my eyes, but they seemed to me to be 

 fairly long. He had about twenty does with 

 him, so I thought that he must be a pretty 

 good one that had driven off a lot of weaker 



