REINDEER AND MUSK-OX 



APPENDIX No. X 



REINDEER IN SIBERIA 



Extract from Chapter XVIII of "The Cruise of the Corivin,'" by John Muir, 



Boston, 1917. 



Steamer "Corwin," Plover Bay. 



This morning a party from the ship went to the head of the bay under the 

 guidance of a pair of Chukchis to see a herd of reindeer that they told us was 

 there. The distance, we found, is about eighteen miles from the lower harbour, 

 where the Corivin is at anchor. The day was fine and we enjoyed the sail very 

 much, skimming rapidly along in the steam launch over smooth water, past the 

 huge ice-sculptured headlands and mountains that formed the walls, and the 

 deep canons and valleys between them that swept back to clusters of glacial 

 fountains. The naturalist made desperate efforts now and then to obtain 

 specimens of rare auks, petrols, ducks, etc., which were flying and swimming 

 about us in great abundance, making lively pictures of happy, exuberant life. 



The rocks bounding the bay, though beautiful in their combinations and 

 collections of curves and peaks, inflowing and touching delicately, and rising in 

 bold, picturesque groups, are, nevertheless, intensely desolate looking for want 

 of trees, shrubs, or vegetation dense enough to give colour in telling quantities, 

 visible at a distance. Even the valleys opening back from the water here and 

 there are mostly bare as seen at the distance of a mile or two, and have only faint 

 tinges of green derived from dwarf willows, sedges, and heathworts that creep 

 low among the stones. Yet here, or in the larger valleys adjacent, where the 

 main tributary glaciers came into the Plover bay trunk, and in other valleys to 

 the northeastward, large herds of reindeer, wild as well as tame, find sustenance, 

 together with a few wild sheep and bears. 



On the terminal moraine of the ancient glacier that formed the first main 

 tributary of the Plover bay glacier, some four miles from the extreme head of 

 the bay, we noticed two small skin-covered huts, which our guides informed us 

 belonged to the reindeer people we were seeking, and that we should certainly 

 find them at home, because their herd was only a little one and found plenty of 

 weeds and moss to eat in the valleys behind their huts without going far away, 

 as the people had to do who owned big herds. At two days' distance, they said, 

 where the valleys are wide and green, with plenty to eat, there is a big herd 

 belonging to one of their friends, so big that they cover all the ground there- 

 abouts; but the herd we were to see was only a little one, and the owner was not 

 a rich man. 



As we approached the shore, a hundred yards or so from the huts, a young 

 man came running to meet us, bounding over the moraine boulders, with easy 

 strength as if his limbs had been trained on the mountains for many a year, until 

 running had become a pleasant indulgence. He was presently joined by three 

 others, who gazed and smiled curiously at the steam launch and at our party, 

 wondering suspiciously, when the interpreter had told our object, why we should 

 come so far and seem so eager to see their deer. Our guides, who, of course, 

 understood their prejudices and superstitions, told them that we wanted a big, 

 fat deer to eat, and that we would pay them well for it — tobacco, lead, powder, 



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