CHAPTER XIV 



TO MOUNT SYLVESTER WITH THE MICMAC INDIANS 



It was not my intention to visit Newfoundland in 1906, but 

 a variety of circumstances caused an alteration of plans, and 

 so September i8th found me speeding west again in the 

 old CorciUi, bound for St. John's. By a careful study of the 

 habits and movements of the Newfoundland caribou, I had 

 gradually formed a theory that nearly all the great body of 

 the deer which summered in the sanctuary between Round 

 Pond in the centre and Terra-Nova and Glenwood in the 

 east, moved southward about the end of October, with 

 converging trails, and that these roads met somewhere in the 

 neighbourhood of Mount Sylvester, where, Joe Jeddore had 

 informed me, the country became high, rocky, and open. It 

 is well known to the Fortune Bay men that the main body 

 of the deer appear in great numbers in the open country 

 immediately to the north of Fortune Bay about 20th November, 

 by which date all the adult stags are hornless. It was there- 

 fore a fair assumption that if I could find both the breeding 

 parties, as well as see the beginning of the big " trek " as it 

 left the woods and emerged into the open country at some 

 point near Sylvester, I should probably encounter the stags 

 before they had dropped their horns, and in such numbers 

 as travellers seldom see. This was proved to be correct, for, 

 although the season was an unusually late one, I did find 

 the ideal hunting-ground and the stags in all their pride of 

 possession. 



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