REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION 



through ignorance of the country and conditions. When I was at St. 

 Petersburg, arranging for the trip to Ola, I was astonished at the apparent 

 lack of information at the Government's disposal regarding reindeer 

 matters in Siberia. It was impossible to find out where the deer were or 

 the number of deer, and I got the impression that the offtcials didn't 

 much care. However, when it dawned upon the officials that somebody 

 in another country wanted these deer, the animals immediately became 

 more \'aluable, and that, I think, was the main reason for the order of 

 prohibition. 



"The moss to feed the deer on the trip was gathered by hand. I 

 employed a number of coast Tungus to gather it on the hills, bring it in 

 and stack it in piles, and in the spring we bagged it. It was all gathered 

 by hand and brought in to the moss piles on the reindeer's backs. We 

 simply had the moss gathered and collected in large piles near the coast, 

 in order to be quickly available for transportation. All we did was to 

 turn the moss piles over at intervals in the hope of preventing fire — 

 spontaneous combustion. I doubt very much if it is difficult to preserve 

 the moss. Always in transporting the deer from Siberia to Alaska, either 

 on the old revenue cutters or on the ship I chartered, we simply gathered 

 the moss and transported it in bags until we used it. We usually built 

 troughs into which the moss would be dumped, and then water was poured 

 over it, because by the time the moss was given to the deer it was rather 

 dry. But the deer seemed to eat it with a relish. 



"If I had the same thing to do over again I would buy older deer, 

 say two years old, and I would endeavour to transport them by sea as 

 late in the season as possible. In other words, I think it would be wisest, 

 in carrying reindeer any distance by sea, to be as far as possible from the 

 time of the growth of the new horns. 



"All of the other deer taken to Alaska for breeding purposes were 

 obtained from the northeastern coast of Siberia, mostly Chukchi deer. 

 One small lot was brought from Baron Korfa bay — Koriak deer. The 

 Tungus deer are in the vicinity of the Othotsk sea. They are much larger 

 and sturdier and have longer legs than the deer of the northeast coast of 

 Siberia. I believe the interior Chukchi and those some distance to the 

 west of East cape have deer which are larger than those on the coast, but 

 I believe that the Tungus deer are larger still. My own experience with 

 transporting deer was as I have described above, and there was a large 

 percentage of deaths. On the other hand, sled deer were brought into the 

 country from Norway, which involved the voyage across the Atlantic, 

 then a railroad trip across the continent, and a further trip by sea and 

 land to Haynes Mission in Alaska. If I remember rightly, there was not 

 a single death. Of course, the deer brought from Norway were sled deer 

 and were brought at the season of the year when the horns were hard. 

 The deer I brought from Ola were younger and were transported at the 

 time when the horns were in velvet. Bearing in mind that some live 

 hundred deer were brought all the way from Norway to Alaska, there 

 would seem to be no reason why they could not be brought from Siberia 

 to the Hudson bay region, which would not be a much greater distance 

 in point of travel. 



"If you wanted to get the Koriak deer, they could be gotten quite 

 late in the season at Baron Korfa bay, on the east coast of Kamchatka. 

 They are smaller deer, however. Then, too, it might not be impossible 



94 



