354 MR. R. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. [May 28, 



every allowance for exaggeration, the Reindeer seems to have been 

 very numerous. In the Icelandic ' Sagas ' they are spoken of as 

 having been very numerous in the (Ester Bygd. 



Four h>indred years ago the natives seem by these accounts to 

 have hunted the Reindeer much in that section generally supposed 

 to be the site of the Qister Bygd (viz. Julianeshaab district). At the 

 present day they have left that district ; and it is now nearly sixty 

 years since any have been shot there. Latterly the hunting has 

 been better in Greenland (south). From 1840 to 1845 many were 

 got ; and within the last few years they seem (if we might judge 

 by the produce of the hunt) to be on the increase. This, however, 

 is, doubtless, owing a good deal to the use of the rifle ; but it is 

 very questionable whether this will not again decrease their numbers, 

 as it seems to have done elsewhere. Necessarily we have no better 

 data to go upon than that so many skins have been traded ; but if this 

 is to be received as evidence, more have been traded of late years. 



When the hunting was at its best it was at the positions where the 

 country was broadest, or where the great iner de glace of the interior 

 was most distant from the coast, viz. Holsteensborg, Snkkertoppen, 

 Godthaab, and Fiskernaaesset. Now there are very few killed at 

 the last-named place. Godthaab also yields few ; but the Holsteens- 

 borg and Snkkertoppen natives have taken a good many of late. 

 At Holsteensborg (formerly mentioned as a favourite locality) the 

 hunting-ground is behind the large inlets, where the ice lies far 

 back, and where land most free from ice has been found. The 

 Reindeer, living iu very large herds, require always to be on the 

 look-out for an extensive feeding-range ; and it has been observed 

 that they are going south, in the direction of Julianeshaab ; and 

 individuals have been annually shot not far from Fredrikshaab. In 

 order to hunt the Reindeer, the natives go every year, in the month 

 of June, from the southern districts to the two northern districts in 

 the Southern Inspectorate, and return in September. A good 

 number are also shot in the winter time ; and not unfrequently, in 

 very snowy winters, they have been known to come down close to 

 the settlements, and the natives have shot them standing in their 

 doorways. The story of the Reindeer going into the interior in 

 the winter is founded on erroneous notions of what the interior is. 

 They no doubt go a little way into the valleys ; but as for going 

 into the interior, that is a physical impossibility ; for the interior 

 is merely one wide frozen waste, surrounded by a circlet of islands. 

 It is to the valleys of these islands that the Reindeer undoubtedly 

 retire ; but nobody travels very far afield in Greenland during 

 the winter season, so that we have no means of arriving at a very 

 accurate confirmation of this supposition. Dr. Hayes's people find- 

 ing them in such abundance at their winterquarters goes further to 

 prove this. One of his men described to me the party as going 

 over a little ridge, and finding the Deer as if in a preserve, like the 

 cattle in the pastures of his native Jutland : " we just shot them as 

 we wanted them " *. 



* Vide also Hayes's ' Open Polar Sea,' passim. 



