372 HOW THE REINDEER LIVE 



man at a distance of live or six hundred paces, and as 

 their eyes are as good as their ears, the huntsman has 

 much ado to get up to them. They are dainty in their food, 

 choosing out only the most delicate of the Alpine plants, 

 and their skins cannot be as tough as they look, for they 

 are very sensitive to the bites of mosquitoes, gnats, and 

 particularly of midges. Eeindeer are very cautious, as 

 many hunters have found to their cost, and mistrustful of 

 men ; but are ready to be friendly with any cows or horses 

 they may come across, which must make the task of 

 taming them a great deal easier. They have their regular 

 hours for meals too, and early in the mornings and late 

 in the evenings may be seen going out for their breakfasts 

 and suppers, which, in summer, consist, in the highlands, 

 of the leaves and flowers of the snow-ranunculus, reindeer 

 sorrel, a favourite kind of grass, and, better than all, the 

 young shoots of the dwarf birch. In the afternoons they 

 lie down and rest, and choose for their place of repose a 

 patch of snow, or a glacier if one is at hand. 



In order to tame a reindeer, you must catch him when 

 he is very young, and even then it is no use to expect him 

 to become as friendly as a cow or a horse. He always 

 has something half wild about him, which peeps out every 

 now and then when you least expect it, and often when 

 it is extremely inconvenient. The tame reindeer is his 

 master's pride and stay, his joy and his riches, and often 

 his torment too ! A Laplander who owns a herd of a few 

 hundred reindeer thinks himself the happiest man on 

 earth, and would not change lots with anybody. Yet, 

 after all, it almost seems as if he belonged to the reindeer, 

 and not that the reindeer belonged to him ! Where they 

 choose to go, he must follow, and neither marshy ground, 

 nor seas, nor rivers, nor anything else, make any differ- 

 ence to them. For months he spends his life in the open 

 air, bitten by insects all the summer, *and by frost all the 

 winter, for he continually finds himself in places where 

 no wood is to be got, so he cannot have even the comfort 



