lOG 



THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 



[chap. 



frozen on the surface, and a crust of ice makes it difficult for 

 them to get at the mountain sides, they become so poor as 

 scarcely to be eatable. In summer, however, they speedily eat 

 themselves back into condition, and in autumn they are so fat 

 that they would certainly take prizes at an exhibition of fat 

 cattle. In the museum at Tromsoe there is preserved the 

 backbone of a reindeer, shot on King Karl's Land, which had a 

 layer of fat seven to eight centimetres in thickness on the loin. 



The reindeer, in regions where it has been much hunted, is 

 very shy. but, if the ground is not quite even, one can creep 



REINDEER PASTURE. 



Green Harbour on SpitzbergcB, after a photograph taken bj' A. Envall on the 20th July, IfcTS. 



within range, if the precaution be taken not to approach it 

 from the windward. During the ruttiug season, which falls in 

 late autumn, it sometimes happens that the reindeer attacks 

 the hunter. 



The Spitzbergen reindeer is not tormented, like the rein- 

 deer in Lapland and on Novaya Zemlya, by "gorm " (inch-long 

 larvae of a fly, which are developed under the animal's skin). 

 Its flesh is also better than that of the Lapp reindeer. None 

 of the contagious diseases which of late years have raged so 



