THE RED DEER 
probably been surprised and killed in some inter -tribal fight after having 
done the deer to death. 
What splendid runs and exciting finishes the first hunters must have 
had, such as even the early Victorian sportsmen, with their deerhounds, 
might envy, save that they cared nothing for the horns of their noble 
quarry save to cut them up for skin-dressing implements and other uses; 
but everything for the meat which kept life in themselves and their families. 
As yet the cultivation of cereals and vegetables was unknown, and 
perhaps unnecessary. Like the “ Yellow Knives ” of the far north of 
America, and Telhuelches of the far south, they were essentially meat- 
eaters, and lived entirely on the captures of bow and spear. So things 
went on until the coming of the Lapps, Feens or Finns, who, doubtless 
crossing from the northern parts of the Scandinavian continent, entered 
Scotland, and brought with them the traps and devices they employed 
for the destruction of the reindeer. The principal trap they used in the high 
fjelds of Norway consisted of building two long stone walls almost at right 
angles to one another, with an apex in the form of a circular fold -yard, 
in which was a small pit about ten feet deep. I have seen numbers of these 
traps in the high mountains of Laerdal and Hallingdal, and they are all 
in much the same condition, the flanking walls having fallen down and 
only the pit remaining with its surrounding stones. 
These traps were usually placed in a narrow neck between two lakes, 
or on the shore of a lake from which the ground sloped rapidly upwards 
towards a precipice. The method of killing the deer was as follows: A 
number of men drove the high ground towards the neck, or lake -edge, 
whilst a few others concealed themselves behind the outer flanks of the 
projecting walls. As soon as the deer approached the apex of the triangle, 
having been scared there by their pursuers, the men on the flanks arose 
and kept them moving forward by rushing in from the sides. The drivers 
then joined in, and no deer could escape except by breaking back, in the 
course of which they were probably killed with arrows or spears. The 
remains of more than one of these stone fences and pits still exist on the 
top of Ben Grimm, in Sutherlandshire, proving that the Piets had intro- 
duced this method of killing deer — probably both red and reindeer — 
into Scotland. It is interesting to note, too, that the methods of all pre- 
historic savages and those few which are still living to-day in the condition 
of Early Man, are practically the same. My friend Mr Melvill, who has 
recently spent two years in the northern basin of the Mackenzie River 
3 
