58 THE REIN-DEER. 



skin. The person, who sits in the sledge, guides the animal with 

 a cord, fastened to its horns, and drives it with a goad. The 

 wild kind, when yoked, sometimes prove refractory, turn against 

 their master, and strike so furiously with their feet, that he is 

 obliged to cover himself with his sledge, until the enraged creature 

 has exhausted his fury ; but the tame ones are active and pa- 

 tient. A Laplander will, in this manner, travel about thirty 

 miles a day, without forcing the rein-deer to make any extraor- 

 dinary effort. This mode of travelling can be used only in the 

 winter, when the country is covered with snow ; and though it 

 is expeditious, it is troublesome, and sometimes dangerous. 



As the rein-deer constitutes the sole riches of the Laplander, 

 and is the source of his comforts, it may reasonably be supposed, 

 that a constant attention to its preservation is his principal em- 

 ployment. As soon as the summer commences, the rein-deer 

 are removed from the low pastures, where they would be con- 

 stantly tormented by the insects, generated in the woods and 

 morasses, and driven up to the mountains, where they are less 

 incommoded. The gnat and the gad-fly are their greatest and 

 most formidable enemies. Every morning and evening, during 

 the summer, the herdsman returns to the cottage with his deer to 

 be milked ; and a large fire of moss is made, for the purpose 

 of driving off the gnats by the smoke. The quantity of milk, 

 afforded in a day by one rein-deer, is about a pint, and it is 

 sweeter and more nutritive than that of the cow. The female 

 commonly brings forth two young ones at a birth, and the time 

 of gestation is eight months. At four years old they are trained to 

 labour, and continue serviceable about five years. The period of 

 their natural life is about fifteen or sixteen years ; but they are 

 commonly killed, for their flesh and their skins, about the age of 

 eight or nine. Their flesh is good, and their tongues are 

 esteemed a great delicacy. The horns of the rein-deer are long 

 and slender, bending forward, with brow antlers, broad and 

 palmated. Mr. Bewick says, that a pair in his possession mea- 

 sured two feet eight inches in length, and two feet five inches 

 from tip to tip, their weight being nine pounds. The projecting 

 brow antler was fourteen inches long, one foot broad, and 

 serrated at the end. 



The rein-deer is found wild in the northern parts of America, 

 and abounds in the vicinity of Hudson's Bay. It is also com- 

 mon in all the northern regions of Europe and Asia, from Lap- 

 land to Karntschatka. Several of the Laplanders possess herds 

 of them to the number of five or six hundred, and some of the 

 richest of the Kamtschatdales are said to have several thousands 

 It is well known, that of every kind of deer the flesh is exceed 

 ingly palatable, wholesome, and nourishing ; in every country, 



