LIFE AND HABITS 9 



To judge of any animal by one or more that have been 

 frightened by the hunter is not fair ; they must be seen under 

 happier conditions, when they are natural and free from the 

 terror with which man inspires them. This dread of man is 

 by no means a recent development, but goes back thousands 

 of years, before the most advanced brain dreamed of the deadly 

 firearms. In the dimly distant days of the stone age when 

 the Beothic Indian, probably the first inhabitant of New- 

 foundland after it became an island, hunted the Caribou as 

 an article of food and used its skin, presumably for clothing, 

 the animal learned the fear of man. But then man was 

 clumsy in his methods and could kill only at close range ; 

 there is a strange story, which is told by Mr. Howley, of an 

 Esquimaux tradition regarding their difficulties in getting 

 near enough to the Caribou to kill them. They believe that 

 originally these reindeer had very large eyes so that no man 

 could approach them unseen. Great distress resulted from 

 their inability to secure the necessary meat, and they besought 

 the Great Spirit to have pity on them in their need, and 

 reduce the power of the eyes of the animals. The Great 

 Spirit listened to their prayers and made the eyes very much 

 smaller, so that the Esquimaux could hunt with far less 

 difficulty. They point to the very marked tear-duct as a 

 proof of the truth of the story and claim that originally the 

 eye extended to the length now occupied by this duct. 

 We know that the ancient man destroyed the Caribou in great 

 numbers, for they were probably his principal source of food; 

 what his earlier methods of killing them were we can only 

 surmise. Spears and tomahawks were among the first of his 

 weapons, and we can still find traces of the immense fences 

 which were constructed for the purpose of bringing the 

 migrating animals within reach of these early hunters. 

 The making of these fences must have involved a vast amount 



