CHAPTER V. 



CARIBOU. 



ALTHOUGH occasionally the caribou is killed within the 

 limits of the United States, they have ever there been deem- 

 ed scarce, doubtless from it being the extreme southern lim- 

 it of their habitat, nor can they be found in such numbers 

 as to justify the sportsman going in their pursuit till the 

 northern shores of the great St. Lawrence are gained ; from 

 whence, as the traveler advances into higher latitudes, daily 

 indications of their presence will become more abundant. 

 How far to the north they may be found is doubtful, al- 

 though it is beyond a question that their range extends to 

 the Arctic Circle. The almost unknown interior of the 

 vast island of Newfoundland abounds with them ; also the 

 interior of Labrador; while in the uninhabited waste be- 

 tween Hudson Bay and Alaska, late Russian America, their 

 numbers are so great as to form the staple article of food 

 of the inhabitants of these dismal lands. 



Capable of resisting with comparative impunity the great- 

 est severity of cold, they suffer severely from heat, to avoid 

 which they make two migrations annually to the north in 

 summer, grazing back to the south in winter. During these 

 journeys the greatest destruction of the species takes place; 

 for they almost invariably follow the same line of march, 

 with which the natives are acquainted, and where they await 

 for the herd either entering mountain defiles or crossing 

 rivers, when they are surrounded and indiscriminately 

 slaughtered. They are also hunted on snow-shoes, after 

 the manner of moose. 



