1 82 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NOITH 



still running from his eyes and the eyelids were swollen — 

 perhaps partly because he had been rubbing them so 

 much. By evening of the second day he could keep his 

 eyes open within the tent, but he told me *hat everything 

 looked double. He said that when he looked at me it 

 sometimes seemed as if I had three eyes and sometimes as 

 if I had four. 



The morning of the third day Cape York had gone out- 

 side the tent door and came in with great excitement, 

 saying there were caribou on a nearby hillside. I went 

 out and sure enough there they were about a mile away. 

 These were the first caribou I had seen, for the Macken- 

 zie district is a fish and rabbit count -y with a few moose 

 in the willows but ordinarily nowadays no caribou. We 

 had seen caribou tracks when I was on the way with 

 Roxy to Tuktuyaktok. These had been animals crossing 

 from the mainland to Richard Island. On the Eskimo 

 Lakes with Harrison we heard of Eskimos living two or 

 three days' journey away from him who had killed a few, 

 but in general that is not a cvribou country either, at 

 least nowadays. 



The Eskimos say that before the whalers came and 

 induced the Eskimos to kill so many caribou to feed 

 the ships, there used to be considerable numbers just 

 east of the Mackenzie. Captain Leavitt told me that 

 on the mainland just south of Herschel Island they often 

 had caribou in the spring, and thirty or forty miles south 

 of Herschel Island in and beyond the mountains there 

 were supposed to be a good many. None had been seen 

 north of the mountains this winter in that locality but 

 Captain Leavitt had told me that as we traveled west 

 the chances of seeing them would become greater and 

 that he believed that south of Barter Island we might find 



