120 HUNTING ADVENTURES. 



iiercl leave off feeding to gaze upon this extraordinary phenomenon, 

 it instantly stops, and the head begins to play its part by licking 

 ats shoulders, and performing other necessary movements. In this 

 way the hunters attain the very centre of the herd without exciting 

 suspicion, and have leisure to single out the fattest. The hindmost 

 man then pushes forward his comrade's gun, the head is dropped, 

 And they both fire nearly at the same instant. The deer scamper 

 off, the hunters trot after them : in a short time the poor animals 

 hait to ascertain the cause of their terror ; their foes stop at the 

 same moment, and having loaded as they ran, greet the gazers 

 with a second fatal discharge. The consternation of the deer in- 

 creases ; and sometimes a great part of the herd is destroyed 

 within the space of a few hundred yards." 



In a country which affords such an uncertain supply of food, 

 and whose climate is so severe, through a great part of the year, as 

 Lapland, the progress of civilization can never be very considerable. 

 The people must of necessity lead a wandering life, uniting the 

 hunting and the pastoral character ; but incapable, from physical 

 causes, of pursuing the arts of agriculture, or entering largely into 

 the communications of commerce. But what civilization exists, or 

 may exist amongst them, is wholly to be ascribed to their best 

 possession the rein-deer. It is not, therefore, incompatible with 

 the great arrangements by which the universe has been created, 

 and is supported, to believe that the rein-deer has been specially 

 bestowed upon the inhabitants of the polar regions, as an improve- 

 ment of their necessary lot, in the same way that the locality of 

 the camel has been fixed in the sandy and stony deserts of Asia 

 and Africa. The poor Laplander knows the value of the faithful 

 cieature which affords him food, clothing, and the means of trans- 

 port ; and he offers his homage of thanksgiving to the Great Author 

 of nature, who has given him this companion of his wanderings. 

 Whether the native of the polar regions hunt the wild deer amidst 

 the icy mountains, be hurried by his aid across the frozen wastes,- 

 or wander with his family and his herds, till the long winter begins, 

 almost without any gradation, to succeed the short summer, the lives 

 vf the Laplander and of thf -em-deer are inseparably united. 



