Newfoundland 
spying the district thoroughly. I had a first- 
class pair of binoculars with a very large field, 
which made excellent stalking-glasses, and which 
Johnny Peters evidently envied, for although he 
was given to saying very little, it was plain to 
me, that if, perchance, I were to lose them and 
he were lucky enough to find them, he would 
have valued highly his acquisition. 
We had been sitting in this place for some ten 
minutes when Johnny gave a sort of grunt, 
whilst he continued to stare at a spot on the 
very far side of the barren we were on. At last 
he muttered ‘“ Caribou!’’—pointing out where 
he had seen them. Look as I might, and I 
tried with every nerve in my eyes to pick them 
up, I could discover nothing. Johnny said they 
must have moved into a hollow part of the 
ground, where they would be out of sight. 
They were too far off to tell whether a stag was 
with the party of four, so we started off to 
where they had disappeared. This took us far 
longer than I had anticipated, and we must 
have walked a distance of three miles. The 
going over these barrens is very heavy, consisting 
as they do of very wet, soft, spongy moss into 
which you sink almost to your ankles at every 
step. Where the ground is somewhat higher 
there up crops the grey, short-growing lichen, on 
which the caribou feed, lichen very similar in 
appearance to that which grows on the boles and 
13 
