278 LAPLANDERS AND REINDEER. 



tions, and large herds of these useful animals are still 

 kept by these primitive people throughout the arctic 

 provinces of Europe, much as cattle are kept in Eng- 

 land. During the summer they mostly retire to the 

 higher fjelds, but in autumn and early winter are often 

 seen in considerable numbers near the coast, accom- 

 panied by herds of deer. The reindeer is to the Lapp 

 what the buffalo was to the Prairie Indian of America, 

 and what the camel still is to the Arab a friend, a 

 beast of burden, and the source from whence nearly 

 all their needs are supplied, as for instance, milk, 

 cheese, butter and meat, while its skin supplies house 

 and clothing, and its sinews thread to sew with. 



In Spitzbergen countless thousands of wild ones still 

 exist, and large numbers are annually killed for their 

 skins. So numerous do reindeer still continue to 

 be there, in spite of the waste of life caused by 

 the inroads of Russian and Norwegian hunters, that 

 it is supposed that their ranks must be recruited by 

 fresh herds descending during the early part of the 

 winter from some unknown continent, existing to the 

 northwards, amid the solitudes of the Palceocrys- 

 tic seas. 



There are a number of circumstances which seem 

 to point to the probability of such a territory being in 

 existence, many of these apparently wild deer appearing 

 to have their ears cut off at the same level, as if it 

 were the work of men, done for the purpose of mark- 

 ing their own stock, and in a way that is different to 

 the practice of any known tribe on the mainland of 

 Europe or Asia. There is also the known immobility 

 of the ice barrier to the eastward of Spitzbergen, which 

 would enable deer to travel across the sea in that 



