2 REINDEER AND SNOW-CAMELS 



supply its own police-force on the way to Klondike, 

 also sent an agent to Norway, who forwarded six Lapps 

 and a hundred and fourteen deer, and was instructed to 

 send an equal number as soon as he could get them. 



Everyone knows that all this trouble, expense and 

 hurry to obtain some two thousand five hundred 

 medium-sized deer from the uttermost parts of the 

 earth is due solely to one physical fact in natural 

 history namely, that these deer can find food where 

 no other beast of burden can. But the exact physical 

 and local conditions which should make it possible for 

 the deer to cross where two thousand horses were 

 already lying dead from starvation are the following. 

 The road lies mainly beyond the northern limit ot 

 grass and trees. The reindeer will eat moss, and 

 prefers it to other food. Moss, as we understand it, 

 is rather an uncommon vegetable. It would be difficult, 

 for instance, to find enough moss by an English road- 

 side to feed one reindeer per diem, not to speak of 

 hundreds. But once beyond a certain line on the 

 Arctic fringe, moss is the one common form of 

 vegetable life. Lichen is the more appropriate name, 

 for it is a thick, whitish growth, springing up naturally, 

 and often burnt by the Lapps over large tracts to 

 produce a thicker crop for the deer, just as Scotch 

 shepherds burn the heather. It is the natural vegetable 

 covering of the earth, where earth, and not rock, is on 



