KEINDEEK NOT DOMESTICATED IN AMEEICA. 75- 



the dense swamps and pine-clad hills, where food is 

 constantly to be found in abundance. The barren cariboo, 

 on the other hand, inhabits the immense flats or mountain 

 ridges close to the Arctic circle, where vegetable growth is 

 sparse, and little shelter afforded from the biting cold 

 winds and snows peculiar to so high a latitude. So great 

 often are the straits the latter variety are subjected to from 

 the inhospitable nature of their habitat, that in some 

 districts they are compelled to become migratory to obtain 

 the necessaries of life. Is it, then, to be wondered at, 

 that there should be a marked difference in size between 

 the inhabitant of the sheltered forest and the wanderer 

 upon the barren upland waste ? 



Another strange circumstance has often struck me viz., 

 that although the reindeer has for ages been domesticated 

 in Europe and Asia, employed both to draw and carry 

 freights, as well as provide milk for the inhabitants of 

 Lapland and the Siberian wastes, no attempt ever appears 

 to have been made in the New World to utilize their 

 capacities. This is the more surprising when we consider 

 that only a few years back Russia possessed a large portion 

 of the north-west angle of the Continent of America, a 

 country literally swarming with wild cariboo, from the 

 herds of which no difficulty would be found to make 

 captives. Still, such has never been done with a view of 

 utilizing their labour, although in her possessions across 

 the Behring Sea reindeer are in constant use among the 

 sparse population that inhabits the north Asiatic slopes 

 that margin the Pacific. Between America and Asia, up 

 in these high latitudes, for many years an extensive trade 



