OPEN-GROUND HUNTING 285 



as any that can be found in the island, and the whole head 

 would have been an extraordinary one but for the hooky point 

 that did duty for the right brow. 



After taking off the head, we rested and had dinner in the 

 rain above Walnanikiak (Jubilee Lake), where Steve had his 

 trapping tilt, and then, moving eastward, it cleared up, and 

 Steve made a splendid spy, fully two and a half miles away, of 

 a big herd of deer, with two large stags. Although we had 

 been marching since daybreak, none of us were tired, so we 

 at once set off over ground full of rocks and moss towards 

 the lake of Keskitpegawi, where Steve had seen the game. 

 If you want to be successful in Newfoundland, or anywhere 

 else for that matter, you must not mind walking, even if it 

 often leads to no result. In this case the stags were both 

 old beasts with poor horns ; one of them had broken his 

 right antler in the centre of the beam, and was the first of 

 nine stags which I afterwards saw similarly disfigured. In 

 Scotland adult red stags only fight occasionally, whereas the 

 reindeer males all fight whenever the opportunity occurs, 

 and their horns being more brittle than those of red deer, 

 wapiti, or moose, they are often devoid of points or pieces 

 of the horns at the end of the rutting season. Nearly every 

 adult stag had a point or two knocked off by the end of 

 October, and one stag that I observed on 3rd November had 

 both horns broken off close to the burr. 



After remaining for some days at Shoe Hill, we decided 

 to go on a three days' tramp to Mount Sylvester, to ascend 

 the mountain and to hunt for fresh ground. The Indians 

 were quite as interested at the prospect of visiting Sylvester 

 as myself, as neither of them had been there, and both 

 regarded the hill with a certain superstitious veneration. 

 It is a saying amongst them that he who visits Sylvester 



