226 EXPLORATIONS IN THE FAR NORTH 



made into clothing; later the long, coarse hair of winter appears, 

 which is heavy and easily broken. Their color in winter — roan 

 — readily assimilates with the gray-hued, moss-hung pines. 



Albinism is so rare among them that old Dog Ribs assured 

 me that they had never seen a "white deer." Yet I secured 

 an excellent mountable specimen (No. 10,820) which had been 

 killed by the Yellow Knives, who hunt northeast of the Great 

 Slave Lake. This animal, an adult male, was entirely white, 

 except the head, which was but little lighter in color than it 

 should have been in a normal condition. They feed in winter 

 upon dried grass — I have seen acres of snow pawed over in 

 search for it — and the cream colored " reindeer moss" (Cla- 

 donia rangiferina) , one of the commonest lichens on the hills of 

 the region. 



The caribou are gregarious, ordinarily ranging in bands of 

 a few score, but during their migrations gathering in vast herds 

 containing thousands of individuals. They seem to have moved 

 eastward, as they have entirely deserted the timbered country 

 along the Mackenzie River. They are not abundant in winter 

 around Rae, where they were killed by hundreds ten years ago. 

 Only one small band crossed the lake toward the west during 

 the winter of 1893-4. Thousands remain in the Barren Ground 

 with the musk-ox, never reaching the timber at all; the others 

 gather in immense herds in October when they enter the woods 

 and work southward as far as the Great Slave Lake, Lake 

 Athabasca, and Reindeer Lake. North of the Great Slave Lake 

 between longitude 109 and 118 W., the greater part of those 

 which enter the timber are massed together into a single herd, 

 which is so erratic in its movements that the Indians, who 

 depend entirely upon the caribou for food, are often reduced 

 to the verge of starvation. They move against the wind so 

 that the direction — whether toward Rae or Fond du Lac — de- 

 pends upon the prevailing winds during the last fortnight in 

 October. In March they return to the edge of the woods. It 

 is said that only the females reach the sea coast, where they 

 drop their young in June, but I have seen both sexes wading in 

 the shoal water of the Arctic Ocean, south of Herschel Island, 

 in July. 



West of the Mackenzie they are still abundant along the bar- 

 ren coast and in the mountains south of it. They migrate 



