Forest and Stream 
$3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1912. 
VOL. LXXIX.—N®. 22. 
127 Franklin St., New York. 
The Caribou Barrens of Newfoundland 
Pictures and Text by the “Judge.” 
STAG ON THE BARREN. 
O N the 24th of August, 1911, I left Boston 
for Newfoundland. The dream of years 
was at last to be realized. The memory 
of my earliest wanderings afield as a lad in Colo¬ 
rado and in the far Northwest, while it was still 
the frontier and before the railroads came, dates 
not back to a time when the mention of caribou 
failed to bring before my mind more than that 
of any other of the great game animals save pos¬ 
sibly only the bighorn sheep itself, a vision of 
snow and winds and wide open country stretch¬ 
ing far away to the north. I used to hear the 
old hunters in Colorado and in Oregon speak of 
the caribou as of the grandest of all the deer, 
surpassing, when considered in all points, even 
the elk and the moose. Possibly this may have 
been because there were no caribou in Washing¬ 
ton or Oregon, although there were at that time, 
I believe, some few in Northern Idaho around 
Kootenai Lake. 
My desire to hunt these noble beasts had 
been whetted to a keen edge the last two years 
by reading before the blazing log fire in the 
country during the long winter evenings the de¬ 
lightful stories of the veteran Selous, and H. 
Hesketh Prichard, and above all that most 
charming of books, J. G. Millais’ “Newfoundland 
and its Untrodden Ways.” 
So I set forth from Boston, and at McAdam 
Junction picked up my young Maine guide, Ralph 
Beach, who was all handsomely dressed up in 
a new set of store clothes in honor of his first 
trip out of the woods. We rolled away down 
through Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, past 
lovely farms and wide hay fields, over a splen¬ 
did road bed, and in a surprisingly good train 
manned by courteous officials. This I have found 
to be generally characteristic of Canadian rail¬ 
ways, and even the Pullman conductors and 
porters did not scorn us. At Sydney, the jump¬ 
ing-off place, a thin rain was falling, and smoke 
hung in a black pall over the steel works, afflict¬ 
ing the town with a depressing atmosphere. We 
were not sorry, therefore, to embark on the Ss. 
Invermore at evening for the short run across 
the Straits of Cabot to Port aux Basques, tbe 
westerly point of the Island of Newfoundland. 
Fog and rain had all been left behind, and 
a lovely morning shone on Port aux Basques as 
we came in from the Straits. Many small sail¬ 
ing vessels were anchored in the port, and we 
thought that the sea-faring folk must make but' 
little voyages in these short boats. Colonel Pike, 
the customs official at Port aux Basques, was 
most courteous and considerate, and before 9 
o'clock we were all comfortably installed in the 
nice little narrow gauge train, having a first class 
breakfast as we rolled away into the island. 
Up from the shore into the high land, cross¬ 
ing occasional small streams and now and then 
a river, we sped along, enjoying the landscape 
full of purple flowers and yellow goldenrod; 
also getting some raspberries now and then, when 
the train stopped for water. Then out upon the 
wide barrens, shining a radiant green under the 
blue sky. 
Crossing Little River, the conductor declared 
that this place is headquarters for all the winds 
of heaven, which are gathered up in the south 
end of the Grand Range, standing off deep blue 
against the sky, and poured out through a nar¬ 
row channel down to the sea. He said that the 
previous Tuesday the train had been held up in 
the cut back of this trestle for hours, waiting 
for the wind to go down enough so that she 
might safely cross. The stunted growth of trees 
and big deadenings spoke eloquently of the rough 
hand laid upon this island by the long dark 
winters. 
At midnight we piled out at Glenwood and 
were met by our native guides, Bob Brooking 
and Lionel Hynes. The grub ordered from St. 
Johns’ had all arrived in good order, and better 
still, the twao canoes which had been especially 
constructed for this trip were in the freight 
house ready to take the water. 
The next morning we overhauled everything 
and packed the stuff in the canoes and in 
Lionel’s boat, which we took along to handle 
extra grub to be cached at the head of naviga¬ 
tion against possible necessity. Glenwood, which 
has seen better days, is a forlorn, wind-swept, 
narrow-chested little community that has not 
spent a dollar on house paint in fifteen years, 
and we were not a bit sorry to turn our backs 
upon it and make off up the Gander River. 
Lionel and Bob both wore the native boots 
of half tanned caribou hide, waterproof to the 
knee, and with pucker strings at the top; and 
Lionel’s particularly, which were new, were beau- 
ful examples of native skill. 
Ralph poled the big canoe up through the 
stiff rapids with his load rather than pack it 
around to load above the rapids as did Bob and 
Lionel. The Newfoundlander is a wonder with 
a head strap, but I think the boys from Maine 
“have a little something on them” when it comes 
to handling canoes in rough water, either up¬ 
stream or down. 
At 2 P. M. we finished making camp at Sandy 
Point, at the outlet of the lake, repacked all the 
grub in waterproof sacks, properly tagged, and 
had a fine night’s sleep in the dry sand, which 
always makes a good bed. 
Heading out into Gander Lake we encoun¬ 
tered a high wind at King’s Narrows, and soaked 
with spray and rain got across with difficulty 
to the lee shore. Gander Lake, with its high, 
clean shores, beaches of shale, and dark green 
hills rising away in the distance, seemed very 
much like Grand Lake, Maine. 
As we beached the canoes to “bile the kettle” 
we found our first caribou track, that of a stag 
which had passed down along the beach during 
the early morning. 
By evening we had reached the head of the 
