]\Iav 29, 1909.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
849 
they have been traversed twice at least every 
year since on the grand migration by countless 
herds of caribou, and when our grandsons visit 
the distant island with perhaps the noiseless fire¬ 
arms of a generation yet to come, these same 
trails will no doubt still be the well-worn 
avenues of travel for the caribou which will be 
the object of their chase. Deep lines across the 
barrens, visible often a mile away, more numer¬ 
ous and more deeply worn than the cow paths 
in a New England pasture, they are a conspicu¬ 
ous feature of most Newfoundland landscapes. 
Sitting in- our tent one September evening, my 
companion and I found entertainment in watch¬ 
ing the pla}"- of the light on the sloping wall of 
the canvas lean-to occupied by the guides. Our 
own fire was burning low, and the brighter fire 
beyond the lean-to cast grotesque shadows on 
the canvas. They were the shadows of the four 
men—two guides, cook and packer—who had to 
bear the brunt of a laborious trip into the in¬ 
terior of the island. Slender sticks wound with 
dough, like flax on a distaff, were stuck in the 
ground and leaning over the fire that the bread 
might bake;* nondescript garments were hang- 
iilg about to dry, for everything is wet in New¬ 
foundland, and the cheerful quartette were clos¬ 
ing the day with song and story. 
The songs were in a mysterious French dia¬ 
lect, bearing evidence of the chant learned in 
some country parish church, a monotonous suc¬ 
cession of sounds in a minor key, but 'musical 
in spite of the lack of musical training on the 
part of the singers. Then followed stories in 
a sort of French, which would have sounded 
almost equally strange and foreign if told to a 
Parisian audience. The stories were related by 
unlettered men who could not have learned them 
from books to men who could not have read 
them in books, and they dealt with mystical sub¬ 
jects—the terrible loup garou and other weird 
things which would thrill the French imagina¬ 
tion. We sat there till the last story was told, 
till the shadows cast by the fitful light of the 
dying camp-fire became dim. and then lay down 
to dream of the next day’s hunt. 
Oh, the poverty of the mind which finds it 
monotonous to sit by the hour and watch for 
game! One may sketch possibly or study the 
sights and sounds to which the over-civilized eye 
and ear are unaccustomed, or plan for the busi¬ 
ness of the year to come—if it is impossible to 
leave business behind—or simply dream of the 
undiscovered mysteries of the remote woods and 
mountains, but always ready, if game breaks 
cover, to return to the realities of the chase. 
It was in Newfoundland, in the Island Lake 
section, where the word “barrens” describes the 
vast range of the caribou, feebly expressing the 
desolation, the poverty of soil, the utter worth¬ 
lessness of the land for any agricultural pur¬ 
pose. I was stationed at the northern end of 
a rock-strewn mountain ridge. My lookout, 
called a gaze by the natives, was a shelter from 
the wind and was built of rocks. ]\Ty gaze 
afforded a visual sweep over irregular reaches 
of peat bog, heather and outcropping' ledges over 
which the caribou travel in their search for food 
and for the society of their kind. It was a land¬ 
scape of dull grays, and browns. Grays seemed 
to predominate. If we saw a little patch of 
gray in the distance, and it was stationary, we 
*Called “skiver cakes,” perhaps a corruption of skewer 
cakes. 
called it a rock; if it moved we called it a 
caribou. 
From my lookout I saw a broken and irregu¬ 
lar sky line, warty with rocks left in the glacial 
era I presume. Alany of these rocks are of 
such unstable equilibrium that a man of ordi¬ 
nary strength can send them crashing down the 
ledgy face of the mountain, a half ton in weight 
sometimes. It tells of the desolation and soli¬ 
tude of the country when we think that since 
“England’s oldest colonial possession” was dis¬ 
covered, so few people have visited the moun¬ 
tain that man, lover of mischief and maker of 
trouble, has left these rocks undisturbed—left 
them for you and me, if we find time hanging 
heavily on our hands, to bowl over for the sake 
of seeing and hearing them crash down the 
mountain side. 
The picture which my lookout afforded w'hich 
made the most impression on my mind from its 
.■V PALMIST OF THE WOODS. 
novelty was of a higher ridge two-thirds of a 
mile away further south, where suddenly ap¬ 
peared the microscopic silhouettes of my hunt¬ 
ing companion and his guide. They, too, were 
watching for the little knots of caribou which 
might furnish the desired trophies if success¬ 
fully stalked after being once seen in the dis¬ 
tance. A man clad in a short hunting coat, worn 
open on a warm day, outlined against the sky 
at a considerable distance, presents a comical 
sight. Mr. Farley and Peter Benoit looked like 
two wandering bro'wnies on the horizon, their 
legs almost invisible at that long range. 
Suddenly I became aware of a caribou slowdy 
walking up the sky line formed by the irregular 
profile of the ridge. He was making straight 
for the summit, and it was interesting to specu¬ 
late on the size and sex of the animal, whether 
he had a fine head and, most of all, whether he 
or my friend would first disco\'er the presence 
of the other. I could see both the sportsman 
and the game, but each was' unconscious of the 
other’s existence. If I were only in wireless 
communication with the other ridge! And so 
I watched, giving odds on the caribou, for the 
wind seemed to favor him. In two or three 
minutes my caribou disappeared from the sky 
line and the picture changed like dissolving views 
thrown on a screen by a stereopticon. 
The next picture followed closely upon its 
predecessor. This time a caribou—I was sure 
it was a small one—appeared on another and 
lower ridge only a third of a mile away. He, 
too, was outlined against the sky. At first I 
took him to be a man, but without visible means 
of support, the legs disappearing from view 
owing to the distance. Soon, as he swung his 
head to one side or the other, looking for pos¬ 
sible danger or possible companions, I made 
sure that it was a caribou. For many minutes 
he stood there, but at last walked leisurely off, 
a silhouette against the sky, like an insect on a 
window pane. 
It was my first trip to Newfoundland, and I 
had neglected to take a field glass, which is an 
important adjunct of such a trip. I afterward 
learned that this caribou was under constant 
observation by IMr. Farley, but that it was only 
a pricket, as the Newfoundlanders call a spike- 
horn. 
John Alexander—what a name for a French¬ 
man ! He was acting—none too efficiently—as 
my guide on the caribou barrens of Western 
Newfoundland one day in September, 1907, and 
I asked him how he came to have such a name. 
His answer indicated that he saw no incongruity 
between his name and his race, so I questioned 
him about his forebears. 
“One of my grandmothers was a Dutch¬ 
man.” he said, “another was a Frenchman, 
another grandfather was a Frenchman. My 
father was a Frenchman and was born in 
Sydney.” 
I am as much at a loss as ever to know how 
he would fit into a genealogy of the Alexander 
family. 
We struggled through miniature jungles of 
dwarf evergreens that day in fog and mist, seek¬ 
ing a lookout from which we could watch for 
caribou in case the fog should lift. The ever¬ 
greens were of different kinds, but all alike in 
their character of obstructionists, the so-called 
steel spruces being the most pernicious and per¬ 
sistent in their assaults on our clothing and 
tempers. In some discouragement we reached 
our lookout and stationed ourselves, waiting for 
the veil of mist to be lifted. 
Hour after hour went by. The air was chill¬ 
ing and little comfort was to be found in sitting 
idly on a rock and watching the shifting banks 
of fog which shut out from view all objects 
more than thirty or forty yards away. It was 
easy to imagine all sorts of living things com¬ 
ing and going in the fog within easy gunshot, 
but for a long time it was impossible for me 
to see anything but inert masses of rock, banks 
of moss, pools of water and John Alexander. 
Frenchman, sitting’ in the lee of a rock and 
smoking. 
My mental processes even were sluggish under 
the influence of the cold and dampness and the 
seeming hopelessness of looking for game. 
While my spirits were thus at low water mark 
an incident happened which acted upon me like 
a galvanic battery. There was a rift in the fog 
