III.] THE REINDEER. 103 



— it is common. It commonly sits immoveable on an ojjen 

 mountain slope, visible at a great distance, from the strong 

 contrast of its white colour with the greyish-green ground. 

 Even in the brightest sunshine, unlike other owls, it sees 

 exceedingly well. It is very shy, and therefore difficult to 

 shoot. The snow ptarmigan and the snowy owl are the only 

 birds of which we know with certainty that they winter on 

 Spitzbergen, and both are, according to Hedenstrom, native 

 to the New Siberian Islands {Otryioki o Sibiri, p. 112). 



In the cultivated regions of Europe the larger mammalia 

 are so rare that most men in their whole lifetime have never 

 seen a wdld mammal so large as a dog. This is not the case 

 in the high north. The number of the larger mammalia here 

 is indeed no longer so large as in the seventeenth century, when 

 their capture yielded an abundant living to from twenty to 

 thirty thousand men ; but sport on Novaya Zemlya and Spitz- 

 bergen still supports several hundred hunters, and during 

 summer scarcely a day passes without a visitor of the coasts of 

 these islands seeing a seal or a walrus, a reindeer or a Polar 

 bear. In order to present a true picture of the Polar traveller's 

 surroundings and mode of life, it is absolutely necessary to 

 give a sketch of the occurrence and mode of life of the wild 

 mammalia in the Polar lands. 



I shall make a beginning with the reindeer. This grami- 

 nivorous animal goes nearly as far to the north as the land in 

 the old world. It was not, indeed, observed by Payer on Franz 

 Josef Land, but traces of the reindeer were seen by us on 

 the clay beds at Cape Chelyuskin ; remnants of reindeer w^ere 

 observed at Barents' winter harbour on the northernmost part 

 of Novaya Zemlya ; some very fat animals w'ere killed by 

 Norwegian walrus-hunters on King Karl's Laud east of Spitz- 

 bergen, and for some years back the reindeer was very numerous 

 even on the north coast of North East Land, and on Castren's, 

 Pany's, Marten's, and Phipj)s' Islands, lying still farther to the 

 north. Although these regions are situated between 80° and 

 81° N.L., the reindeer evidently thrives there very well, and 

 finds, even in winter, abundant food on the mountain slopes 

 swept clear of snow by storms, as is shown by the good condi- 

 tion in which several of the animals shot by us were, and by 

 the numerous reindeer traces and tracks which w^e saw on 

 Castren's Island in the month of May, 1873. Nor does a 

 winter temperature of — 40° to —50° appear to agree particu- 

 larly ill with these relatives of the deer of the south. Even 

 the Norwegian reindeer can bear the climate of Spitzbergen, 

 for some of the selected draught reindeer which I took with 

 me to Spitzbergen in 1872, and which made their escape soon 

 after they were landed, were shot by -hunters in 1875. .They 



