THE CARIBOU. 103 



On this head, Parker Gillmore says: 



Capable of resisting with comparative impunity the greatest 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 to the species takes place, for they 

 almost invariably follow the same line of march, with which the natives 

 are acquainted, and where they wait for the herd, either entering mountain 

 defiles or crossing rivers, wlien they are surrounded and indiscriminately 

 slaughtered. They are also hunted on snow-shoes, after the manner of hunting 

 the Moose. 



When the time comes to which I have referred above, 

 the interminable plains and hills of the Arctic Circle will, 

 by the annihilation of time and space, be almost next door; 

 then we shall have many an interesting and thrilling tale of 

 flood and field for the sporting Journals, to delight the soul 

 of the sportsman who has neither the time nor the money 

 to spare to enable him to visit those, at present, far-off 

 fields of sport. We shall all then become as well acquainted 

 with the Musk-ox, the Polar Bear, the Walrus, the Barren- 

 ground Caribou, and the fields of ice which glisten beneath 

 the eternal splendor of the unsetting sun, and the distinct 

 crackling of the aurora borealis, as we now are with the 

 game animals and birds of our own country. Sporting litera- 

 ture, notwithstanding what mere humanitarian writers and 

 thinkers may say to the contrary, has an elevating and 

 humanizing effect; and the true sportsman, wherever you 

 find him, in the palace or in the humble cot, on the mount- 

 ain-side or in the vale, on land or water, in the city or amid 

 the glorious and sublime solitudes of Nature, is ever and 

 always a gentleman. 



In the country as far as two hundred and fifty miles 

 north of the Ottawa River, in the unbroken wilds of which 

 the Woodland Caribou abounds, I know of no authentic 

 accounts of the appearance of the Arctic species. During 

 very severe winters, the Ptarmigan comes southward to the 

 pine woods, within one hundred and fifty miles of the 

 Ottawa. Many of them are brought to this city, and 

 mounted by taxidermists. The wanderer of the Arctic 

 Circle never, that I have learned of, comes so near. 



