312 THE REINDEER AND THE BUFFALO. 



and filed away to other haunts to seek refuge from 

 man's intrusion. 



On the north-west and south-west shores of Lake 

 Athabasca the wood buffalo and the moose are still 

 tolerably numerous, and furnish the staple of subsist- 

 ence to the employes at the Fur Company's forts, as 

 well as to the natives of these districts. To the north 

 of the Peace is the true home of the reindeer. Some 

 twenty or thirty miles north of Fort Vermilion lies the 

 range of the Reindeer Hills ; and from their summits, 

 some fifty miles to the south, beyond the Peace 

 River, stretching from east to west, may be seen the 

 Buffalo Mountains. These two chains may almost be 

 said to form the geographical limits of the animals 

 whose names they bear. Of the reindeer and the 

 buffalo Colonel Butler says : 



" It is singular how closely the habits of those two 

 widely differing animals approximate to each other. 

 Each have their treeless prairie, but seek the woods in 

 winter ; each have their woodland species ; each separate 

 when the time comes to bring forth their young ; each 

 mass together in their annual migrations. Upon both 

 the wild man preys in unending hostility. When the 

 long days of the Arctic summer begin to shine over the 

 wild region of the Barren Grounds, the reindeer set 

 forth for the low shores of the Northern Ocean ; in the 

 lonely wilds, whose shores look out upon the archi- 

 pelago where once the ships of England's explorers 

 struggled midst floe and pack and hopeless iceberg, the 



