132 HUNTING CAMPS. 



Newfoundland had been exceptionally cold and severe, 

 and in consequence the antlers did not grow, in most 

 cases, to their usual dimensions. But even in these 

 *' lean years," of which 1904 and 1905 are good 

 examples, there are always a certain proportion of 

 stags whose horns are so massive that they seem, in 

 some degree at any rate, to defy the result of adverse 

 weather. We began by making a circle to get the 

 wind in our favour, and as we passed out from behind 

 just such another clump of spruce trees as that in which 

 our camp was set we saw before us an undulating 

 upland covered with snow which had drifted among 

 a dwarf growth of spruce and their kind. Just upon 

 the hither side of the sky-line a little band of caribou 

 were lying down. There were seven of them in all, 

 and two appeared to be mature stags. Up to that 

 time the necks of stags had always shone out white 

 against the yellow of the marshes or the claret-coloured 

 moss and leafage of the barrens, but the animals we 

 were now looking at appeared of a dirty ivory against 

 the pure background of snow. It was not until we 

 had approached within shot that I saw that neither 

 stag carried antlers of any great size. We were about 

 to turn aside, intending to leave the animals undis- 

 turbed, when the tops of the horns of another stag rose 

 over the sky-line. Soon the stag himself appeared, and 

 after standing for a moment he began walking down 

 towards us. Lying as we were in a patch of spruces, 

 none of which were more than two feet high, we were 

 nevertheless quite invisible to the stag, so that long 

 before he was opposite us the telescope had been 

 levelled upon his horns. They were very long and 

 thin, rather of the Norwegian reindeer than of the 



