Ill 



SEASONS AND EQUIPMENT 



MIDSUMMER is the season when the hunter 

 may visit the Barren Grounds with the least dis- 

 comfort and least danger, for at this time you go 

 by canoe. The caribou are plentiful and the 

 thermometer rarely goes below freezing-point. 

 But even then trials are many, and there is con- 

 siderable danger of starvation. The mosquitoes 

 are a pest almost beyond endurance, and the 

 caribou, although abundant, are down toward the 

 Arctic and of very uncertain movement. Their 

 course of migration one year may be fifty to one 

 hundred miles east or west of where it was the 

 preceding year. In the 350,000 square miles of 

 the Barren Grounds one may easily go days 

 without finding caribou even at such a time of 

 plenty ; and not to find them might easily mean 

 starvation. 



The most extensive trips into the Barren 

 Grounds for musk-oxen previous to my venture 



44 



