A NEWFOUNDLAND CARIBOU-HUNT 



with surprising rapidity, and, owing to the buoyancy of the 

 hair, swim very high in the water. The method of slaughtering 

 them practised by our neighbors on the next point was to 

 row down the swimming caribou in the midst of the lake, and 

 kill them with a handful of slugs from the muzzle of one of their 

 antiquated sealing muskets. 



Becoming weary of inactivity, Howe reconnoitered the moun- 

 tain back of camp one afternoon, and seeing caribou in the 

 distance, started after them the next day, accompanied by one 

 of the guides. They returned at dusk with the head of a 

 twenty-two-point bull, having seen many caribou but no very 

 large bulls. Several days of thick fog prevented hunting, but 

 during the afternoon of October 29th Tom and I climbed 

 to the top of Mount Seymour. With the glasses we looked 

 over a magnificent panorama of scenery, and discovered many 

 caribou in the distance, but none with large heads. On the 

 bare tops of these mountains we found Allen's ptarmigan 

 (Lagoptis lagopus alleni), but these birds were not abundant. 

 On descending the mountain we almost trod upon a large, 

 partly turned Arctic hare, which was curled up in the moss, 

 and which would not believe that it had been discovered until 

 we literally pushed it out of its bed. 



Early the next morning Tom Webb and I started at day- 

 break to hunt caribou in a burnt range of mountains to the 

 south. The first range of hills was rather open, but the ground 

 was covered with a thick, slippery red-and-white moss, which 

 would have made travelling very tedious had it not been for 

 the numerous deeply cut caribou trails (in this country called 

 leads) which invariably extended north and south. From the 

 tops of the first long slope we plunged into a thick growth of 

 stunted black spruce which extended for miles. An hour later, 

 while forcing my way through this in the wake of the struggling 

 Tom, I became aware of a bull caribou travelling through the 

 thick growth at right angles to our course fifty yards distant. 



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