NEAR MIDDLE RIDGE. 141 



through the lungs. Afterwards we took his head and that 

 of the stag I had killed on the previous day into Wynyard's 

 camp, where I was delighted to find that my friend had 

 added another nice head to his bag. 



We cached the canoes on the following day and were able 

 to travel very light, and consequently made the longest 

 journey I have ever done at a stretch in Newfoundland. 

 Starting before dawn with our packs we reached our base 

 camp at Butt's Brook the same evening and, pushing on at 

 once in the flats, arrived at Terra Nova station by eleven 

 o'clock at night. On the way out, just before we reached 

 Sir William Whiteway's Drogue, we came upon the fairly 

 fresh tracks of a bear. 



On the whole the 1904 trip was disappointing both as 

 regards the number of deer seen and as regards the size of 

 the antlers, for whereas in 1903 I alone saw a hundred and 

 twenty-one absolutely shootable stags, in 1904 Wynyard 

 and I only saw seventy between us, and of these a large pro- 

 portion carried very poorly-grown horns. As to the num- 

 ber of the deer, it is certain that we failed to strike the main 

 migration, which did not pass through the Terra Nova 

 country in 1904. The caribou are admittedly arbitrary in 

 their movements and change their course every year ; the 

 diminished horn growth might be attributable, as I have 

 said before, to the severity of the spring of that year, the 

 prolongation of the cold seeming to hold back the normal 

 production of the antlers of the caribou in Newfoundland. 

 I believe that in that year, 1904, no head of over thirty-five 

 points was brought in to St. John's. 



Apart from this universal poverty of horn growth, the 

 wetness of the season added no small item to our disappoint- 

 ment, for we missed the usual lovely October weather, to 

 which I had not only looked forward myself, but had led 

 Wynyard to look forward also. For all that I believe we 

 both enjoyed our four weeks on the barrens. 



