320 NEWFOUNDLAND 



the mother as long as she can give milk. At two years of 

 age they will receive the stag. Without doubt they bear 

 calves very regularly for more than twenty years, as the red- 

 deer hinds do, and the percentage of barren does is very 

 small. Instances of twins are rare, as are also pure white 

 varieties. I saw a nearly white doe on the Gander in 1905, 

 and in the spring of 1904 Steve Bernard shot a young doe, 

 near Long Harbor, that was pure white all over, with pink 

 and white hoofs. 



The Indians say that in extreme old age the stags 

 become both blind and deaf, and that they occasionally 

 come across these old patriarchs whose horns are reduced 

 to thin spires with a hardly perceptible brow. On this 

 point they have an interesting superstition which is fully 

 believed in. They say that when stags become very old 

 they go down to the salt water and disappear in the sea, 

 where they at once turn into large whales (Pudup) or into 

 small whales (Halibuge or Muspage). The origin of this, 

 I find, comes from the home of the Micmacs, Sydney, Cape 

 Breton, where one day a hunter followed three moose along 

 the shore for some distance, and then found the tracks 

 entered the sea. Immediately afterwards he saw three large 

 whales spouting off shore, and his simple mind connected the 

 two facts. I explained the possibilities of the circumstance, 

 but the Indians held firmly to their views, instancing that, 

 conversely, stags often came out of the sea on to the land 

 again. John Hinx gave several examples of this, and stated 

 that his grandfather, Joe Paul, had once shot three stags 

 near Conn River, whose stomach was "full of shrimps." 

 The other Indians at once confirmed these tales. After 

 this it was useless to argue. 



The principal food of the caribou at all seasons is the 



