FOREST SPORTS. 201 



ject, that the Cariboo, or Rein-Deer of the forests, is when 

 adult not inferior in size to a yearling heifer, and that the old 

 males, or bulls, as they are termed, are often found from fourteen 

 and a half to fifteen hands in height. In truth, no person who 

 had ever seen so much as the track of the animal in question, 

 could think of comparing it in point of size to the Deer of Ame- 

 rica. 



It is this difference of size especially, which has led to the 

 belief that the Cariboo is, in truth, a distinct variety of the 

 Rein-Deer from that which is the chief article of food to the 

 Esquimaux of the western, and domesticated by the Laplanders 

 of the eastern continent. That animal is scarce found either in 

 Europe or in America, if identical in the two continents, south 

 of the Arctic Circle, or a degree or two above it ; while the Ca- 

 riboo is found here everywhere north of the 45th and 46th de- 

 grees north latitude ; a difference of range and climate which 

 cannot be explained on any ground of comparative tempera- 

 ture, and which would go far toward the establishing a specific 

 difference. 



Indeed Mr. Barton Wallop, an English gentleman of rank 

 and education, many years a resident of New Brunswick, who, 

 so far as I know, is the only practical sportsman who has written 

 of Cariboo hunting, — vide, New- York Turf Register, vol. ix., 

 p. 193, and Porter's edition of Hawker, p. 326, — speaks of it 

 as an animal confessedly distinct from the Rein-Deer. " By-the- 

 bye,'' — says Mr. Wallop, in an imaginary conversation betweer 

 two characters of one of his clever sporting sketches — " before 

 you leave us, I must show you some Cariboo hunting. The 

 Cariboo of this country are very like Rein-Deer, a little larger ; 

 they travel with great swiftness and ease over the snow ; but a 

 bull Cariboo has little of the amiable or tractable about him, 

 and when enraged is a formidable antagonist." 



Again, a few pages further on in the same paper, he makes 

 his hero discourse thus to the neophyte, ov green ^un : " As this 

 is the first time you have seen a Cariboo trail, you must observe 

 it Is much like that of an Ox, save that the cleft is much more 



