224 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



as well as the stags, although of a smaller size. 

 They shed their horns every winter, and numbers 

 of these cast horns strew the plains where the herds 

 have wintered. 



The deer I had killed on the 25th were reasona- 

 yy shy and wild, as I think they had been hunted 

 by Ericson's boat's crew in the lower valley a few 

 days before; but sometimes they are incredibly 

 tame and fearless, and I have repeatedly known 

 deer, which I had failed in approaching unseen, to 

 come up boldly of their own accord until they were 

 within easy shot of me, although I was not only 

 in full view, but to windward of them! I can 

 only account for this extraordinary temerity on the 

 part of these deer by supposing that they were in- 

 dividuals which had been reared in some remote 

 part of the country, and had never seen a human 

 being, nor any thing else which could hurt them,* 

 in their previous blissful existences. Neither does 

 the report of a rifle much alarm them ; but that is 

 more easily understood, as they are no doubt ac- 

 customed to hearing the cracking of the glaciers 

 and the noises caused by the splitting of rocks 

 from the frost in winter. 



On one occasion Lord David Kennedy found a 

 troop of five deer, and, obtaining a concealed posi- 



* There are no wolves in Spitzbergen ; and I am inclined to 

 donbt whether the Polar bear ever meddles with the reindeer, 

 unless he may fall in with a sick or wounded individual near 

 the sea-shore. 



