THE CAKIBOO. 29 



tlie like ; especially for tlie moccason to be used under 

 snow-slioes. 



As to its habits, while the Lapland or Siberian Bein- 

 deer is the tamest and most docile of its genus, the 

 American Cariboo is the fiercest, fleetest, wildest, shy- 

 est and most untameable. So much so, "that they are 

 rarely pursued by white hunters, or shot by them, ex- 

 cept through casual good fortune ; Indians alone having 

 the patience and instinctive craft, which enables them 

 to crawl on them unseen, unsmelt for the nose of the 

 Cariboo can detect the smallest taint upon the air of 

 any tiling human at least two miles up wind of him and 

 unsuspected. If he takes alarm and start off on the run 

 no one dreams of pursuing. As well pursue the wind, 

 of which no man knoweth whence it cometh or whither 

 it goeth. Snow-shoes against him alone avail little, for 

 propped up on the broad, natural snow-shoes of his long, 

 elastic pasterns and wide cleft clacking hoofs, he shoots 

 over the crust of the deepest drifts, unbroken ; in which 

 the lordly moose would soon flounder, shoulder deep, if 

 hard pressed, and the graceful deer would fall despair- 

 ing, and bleat in vain for mercy but he^the ship of the 

 winter wilderness, outspeeds the wind among his native 

 pines and .tamaracks even as the desert ship, the dron> 

 edary, outtrots the red simoon on the terrible Zahara 

 and once started, may be seen no more by human eyes, 

 nor run down by fleetest feet of man, no, not if they 

 pursue him from their nightly-casual camps, unwearied, 



