584 
FOREST AND STREAM 
NEWFOUNDLAND CARIBOU (RANGIFER TERRAENOVAE, BANGS). 
Wild stag, photographed, 1902 , on a Newfoundland barren, 
by Charles D. Cleveland, and reproduced by permission. 
of an old man. When we started I asked Dan 
if he did not think Saunders was getting very 
old to go guiding, to which he replied, “Uncle 
Bob is pretty old, but he’s pretty tough,” so I 
judged Dan was not much concerned about him. 
When it became light enough to see we loaded 
the three canoes, pushed off and started up the 
Terra Nova River. There were three miles of 
river and then six miles of lake and by the time ' 
we disembarked on a bar at the head of the 
lake for lunch my shoulders and arms ached 
with the unaccustomed work of the paddles. 
I was much surprised that I had not seen any 
caribou flocking down to the edges of the lake 
to be shot, but, through years of bitter experi¬ 
ence, I judged that this was like the fishing re¬ 
sorts where the fishing always had been fine, 
either the month before you got there, or else 
last year, or like those hunting places, where 
there is always game which disappears, for some 
mysterious reason, when you arrive. 
Surrounding Terra Nova Lake were bare roll¬ 
ing hills, covered only with grey rocks and black¬ 
ened stumps of burned timber, but when we 
reached the river above the lake we found it 
lined with spruce and birches, the fall leaves still 
swinging on the trees on the border of the river, 
and making the changing views as beautiful as 
any of the rivers of Northern Canada. 
Soon after lunch we struck the swift part of 
the river. At the first heavy rapids I got out 
and walked along the bank and shot the first 
game of the trip, which was an ordinary snow- 
shoe rabbit of the North. All the afternoon we 
worked up the stream sometimes paddling, some¬ 
times pulling the canoes along the bank with a 
rope and sometimes poling them. 
Toward evening we came to the place where 
we were to leave the river. There, at the inlet 
of a little brook, we made camp and set up our 
tent and stove and ate the rabbit for supper. As 
both Smith and I were as sore over the shoulders 
from the long, hard paddling, as though we had 
been pounded with clubs, we were glad to turn in. 
The weather the first day had been clear and 
crisp but during the night I was awakened by the 
patter of rain upon the tent, and, when we looked 
out the next morning, we found a low, gray sky 
and a steady downpour; a typical wet, fall day 
with no signs of clearing. After breakfast Dan 
came to our tent and told us that, in his opinion, 
it was too wet to break camp and that he thought 
we had better stay there and he and the boys 
would take a load of stuff and go over and 
leave it at the camp on the other side of Pynsent 
Lake. This was satisfactory to us so they started 
off and we spent the day reading, shooting at a 
target and fooling around the camp. About 
four o’clock, just as the rain stopped, Dan and 
the rest returned. 
The next morning was clear, and we prepared 
to make our first pack trip into Newfoundland. 
Piney presented us with the most awful cup 
of coffee at breakfast that I have ever had the 
misfortune to meet. I asked him what he made 
it from and he produced a can which stated on 
the label that it was a mixture of chicory and 
coffee but the makers of that compound should 
not have boasted in that way. They might have 
put one bean of coffee in the can, but it is 
doubtful. I told Piney the coffee was one thing 
he need not bother to pack and everybody stuck 
to tea, which was excellent and plentiful. Dur¬ 
ing the whole trip we were deluged with it. In 
fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that we 
were always wet with rain outside and tea 
within. 
Both Smith and I had pack bags for all our 
superfluous personal stuff- When I left Chicago 
it seemed to me that I had taken nothing to 
spare, but, when I had packed my bag with an 
extra change of clothes, extra socks, shoes, 
twenty-two caliber revolver, tobacco, pipes, 
glasses, two books, camera, films and a few other 
odds and ends, I found that I had all I wanted 
to carry. 
At first we bore diagonally away from the 
river over the long marshes. These marshes 
were entirely different from the muskegs of the 
west, in fact, were different from anything I 
had ever walked on before. Hunting snipe you 
walk through marshes which are mud, grass and 
water, but the Newfoundland ones are endless 
depths of wet moss, so that walking on them is 
exactly like walking on layers of wet bath 
sponges. Each sponge is just as wet as it can be, 
without water running out of it, and you sink 
into your ankles at each step. Of course, after 
the rain, the sponges are a little wetter, but other¬ 
wise, the extra water makes little difference. 
We had proceeded hardly a mile across these 
marshes before I was wet through with perspira¬ 
tion and my arms and legs ached from the walk¬ 
ing and the weight of the pack. Even the rifle 
I was carrying seemed to weigh considerably 
more than usual. I took one look at Smith and 
saw he was evidently in much the same state that 
I was and I was just wondering whether we 
were going t<3 keep that up all day when Dan 
threw off his pack and said he guessed it was 
about time to have a blow so we sat down and 
had a blow, and, as far as I was concerned, it 
was a good one. After the next mile we had 
another, the only difference being, that as we 
were sitting still, a solitary caribou cow came 
out of the woods and walked through the marsh 
about fifty yards from us. She apparently was 
