LIFE AND HABITS 21 



limb. The long neck hair which gives so much character 

 to them, especially to the older stags, is lacking, and the 

 neck of the stag is much thinner, as the large glands below 

 the ears are not visible. Altogether, the Caribou of the 

 summer months is a different animal from the one we shall 

 see later in the year, both in appearance and habit, and so 

 seldom are they seen during the day-time that we can quite 

 understand how it was that the early explorers, such as 

 Cabot (in the latter part of the fifteenth century) and others 

 considerably later who visited the island during the 

 summer, failed to see the Caribou, or at least they failed to 

 mention them. Ernest Thompson Seton, in his finest 

 work, " Life Histories of Northern Animals," writes : 



" Although the habitat of the Caribou lay nearer Europe 

 than that of any other of the American big game, and the 

 animal was a common characteristic inhabitant of those 

 northern parts of the continent visited by Cabot (1497), 

 Roberval (1534), and Cartier (1535), this species was 

 not discovered by white men until after the Wapiti, the 

 White-tailed Deer, and the Moose. So far I have found 

 no earlier mention than that by Les Carbot (or de Monts) 

 in 1609." 



Evidently the early visitors to the island did not penetrate 

 far into the interior, they were content to stay on the coast 

 where the extraordinary abundance of fine fish proved such 

 an attraction. The inland country, which at best presents 

 somewhat unusual difficulties to the explorer, had apparently 

 nothing to offer them so valuable as the limitless harvest 

 of the ocean, so they stayed on the coast and knew 

 nothing of the great herds of Caribou which populated the 

 interior, offering them a supply of the best of meat, which 

 would without doubt have proved a welcome change from 

 their monotonous diet of fish. How it was that these men 



