THE CARIBOO
(.Rangifer, Hamilton Smith; Rangifer Caribou, Audubon and Bachman.)

Muzzle entirely covered with hair; the tear bag small, covered with a pencil of hairs. The fur is brittle; in summer, short; in winter longer, whiter; of the throat longer. The hoofs are broad, depressed, and bent in at the tip. The external metatarsal gland is above the middle of the leg. Horns, in both sexes, elongate, subcylindric, with the basal branches and tip dilated and palmated; of the females smaller. Skull with rather large nose cavity; about half as long as the distance to the first grinder; the intermaxillary moderate, nearly reaching to the nasal; a small, very shallow, suborbital pit.

The above diagnosis, taken from Dr. Gray’s article on the Buminantia in the Knowsley menagerie, seems to embrace the chief characteristics of the reindeer of the sub-arctic regions. The colour, habits, &c., of the variety designated above will be found succeeding the following general considerations. As a species subject to but slight local variation (with one possible exception in the case of the barren ground cariboo) the reindeer, Cervus tarandus of Linnaeus, rangifer of Hamilton Smith, inhabits both the old and the new worlds under similar circumstances of climate and natural productions. Its range across the Northern continents of Asia, Europe and America is almost unbroken; whilst in the North Atlantic, which presents the only serious interruption to its circumpolar continuity, it occurs in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland. Sometimes preferring the barren heights of the Norwegian fells, or the elevated plateaux of Newfoundland, at others the seclusion of the pine forest (as with the woodland cariboo of America), its haunts and boundaries are always-determined by the distribution of those mosses and lichens which almost exclusively constitute its food—the Cladonia rangiferina or reindeer lichen, with two or three, species of Cornicu-laria and Cetraria.

When we consider the great antiquity of the reindeer, and its occurrence as a true fossil mammal coeval with the mammoth and other gigantic animals now extinct, in connection with its singular adaptation to feed on lichens—those representatives of a primitive vegetation which are still engaged in preparing a soil for higher forms in northern latitudes—we cannot fail in recognising its mission as an animal of the utmost importance in affording food and clothing to the primitive races of mankind of the stone age. With its remains discovered in the bone caves and drift beds of that period are associated stone arrow-heads and bone implements ; whilst a resemblance of the animal, fairly wrought upon its own horn, leaves no room to doubt its uses as a beast of the chase, though probably not (in those savage times) of domestication.

Even in Caesar’s day ancient Gaul was a country of gloomy fir forests and extensive morasses, and its climate more like that of Canada at present. The reindeer also was still abundant throughout central Europe (though probably it had long since disappeared from Great Britain and the south of France), and was in a state of gradual migration to its present northern haunts. A more essentially arctic deer than the elk, the reindeer, in its southern extension, is found with the latter animal co-occupant of the wocfded regions which succeed the desert plains on the shores of the Polar ocean, termed “barren grounds” on the American continent, and “Tundras” in Europe and Asia. Its most southern limit in the Old World is reached in Chinese Tartary in lat. 50°. A fact mentioned in the Natural History Review, in an article on the Mammalia of A moor land, may be here quoted as showing a singular meeting of northern and southern types of animal life. It is stated that the Bengal tiger, ranging northwards occasionally to lat. 52°, there chiefly subsists on the flesh of the reindeer, whilst the tail-less hare (pika) a polar resident, sometimes wanders south to lat. 48° where the tiger abounds.

Following an ascending isotherm through Siberia and Northern Russia, the reindeer comes down on the elevated table-lands of Scandinavia to latitude 60°, “ wherever,” as Mr. Barnard observes in “Sport in Norway,” “the altitude is above the limit of the willow and the birch.” From the latter country the animal was successfully introduced into Iceland in 1770 (a similar attempt being made at the same time to acclimatize it in Scotland, which ended in failure), and has since so multiplied as to be regarded with disfavour by the inhabitants, who care little for it as a beast of the chase, on account of the damage it does to the grasses and Iceland moss on the plains. According to Professor Paijkull, author of “A Summer in Iceland,” the desert plains south of Lake Myvatn are its principal resort.

Crossing the Atlantic to the south of Greenland, which is inhabited by the variety (or species R. Groenlandicus, the American reindeer, now termed ‘the cariboo, is first met with in Newfoundland. It is abundant on the elevated plateaux and extensive savannahs of this great island, and is sometimes seen on the cliffs even at Cape Race.

The most southerly range attained by the species on the Atlantic seaboard of North America is determined at Cape Sable in Nova Scotia, in lat. 43° 30', or about that of Marseilles. In this province the cariboo is becoming very scarce, and almost altogether restricted to the high lands of Cape Breton, and the Cobequid range of hills. It is not found in Prince Edwards Island or in Anticosti.

Tolerably abundant in New Brunswick and the adjoining portion of Canada south of the St. Lawrence to the latitude of Quebec, of rarer occurrence in the State of Maine, we find the home of the woodland cariboo in the great belt of coniferous forest which in Upper and Lower Canada extends northwards from the basin of the St. Lawrence over an immense wilderness country, and embraces the southern area of the Hudson's Bay basin. From the western shore of Lake Superior, and at some distance back from the prairie country, the line of its range across the continent curves to the northwest, following the rapidly ascending isotherm into the Valley of the Mackenzie, and thence crossing the Rocky Mountains, passes into the American territory of Alaska.

According to Mr. Lord it inhabits the high ridges of the Cascade Mountains, the Galton range and western slope of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia.

In evidence of the transmission of the cariboo into Eastern Asia, it is stated by Dr. Godman that it crosses from Behring's strait to Kamschatka by the Aleutian islands.

Closely associated with man in a state of semidomestication in Siberia and Lapland, the wild rein-deer also largely contributes to the support of the various nomadic tribes of these countries, by whom it is slaughtered on the paths of its two great annual migrations. In America likewise, though no attempt has been made to convert the cariboo into a beast of burden, its flesh is the mainstay of many wandering Indian tribes who inhabit the subarctic forest region from Labrador to the northern spurs of the Rocky Mountains, and its skin their principal resource for clothing. In its distribution across the American continent, indicated above, it is pursued in the chase by the Montagnais and Nasquapee Indians of Labrador, the Crees and Chipewyans of Hudson’s Bay, and the Dog-ribs and other tribes of the Mackenzie Valley. To the Micmacs, Malicites and others, south of the St. Lawrence, it is no longer indispensable as a staple of subsistence; they are now intimately associated with the civilisation of the white man, who completely possesses their hunting-grounds, and with whose mode of life they partially comply; but to the wilder races designated above, its gradual disappearance must bring starvation and a corresponding progress towards extinction.

With regard to the barren ground cariboo (E. Groenlandicus) being distinct from the larger animal of the forests, the separation of the two as species by Professor Baird of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington in the description of North American mammals, which accompanies the War Department Reports of the Pacific Route, joined with the opinion expressed by Sir John Bichardson in his “Journal of a Boat Voyage through Rupert’s Land and the Arctic Sea," and the further testimony of Dr. King, surgeon to Back's expedition, appears to leave no room for doubt. Mr. Baird says “ the animal is much smaller than the woodland reindeer; the does not being larger than a good sized sheep/’ The average weight of ninety-four deer shot in one season by Captain M'Clintock’s men, when cleaned for the table, was sixty pounds. “A full-grown, well-fed buck,” says Sir J. Bichardson, “seldom weighs more than one hundred and fifty pounds after the intestines are removed. The bucks of the larger kind which were mentioned as frequenting the spurs of the Rocky Mountains, near the Arctic circle, weigh from two hundred pounds to three hundred pounds, also without the intestines.” He also states that “ this kind does not penetrate far into the forest even in severe seasons, but prefers keeping in the isolated clumps or thin woods that grow on the skirts of the barren grounds, making excursions into the latter in fine weather.” Dr. King mentions that the barren-ground species is peculiar not only in the form of its liver, but in not possessing a receptacle for bile. This species ranges along the shores of the Arctic Ocean and of Hudson’s Bay, above the northern limit of forest growth; it inhabits Melville and other islands of the Arctic archipelago, and is found in Greenland.

The cariboo of the forests of Lower Canada, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, which we now proceed to describe, seems to attain in this portion of America, the finest development of which the species is susceptible. It is a strongly-built, thick-set animal, (that is by comparison with the more graceful of the Cervidae), yet far from being as ungainly and slouching as the Norwegian reindeer is commonly depicted in drawings, though these are probably generally taken from domesticated specimens, which they resemble much more closely than they do the wild deer of the mountains. A very large buck in Newfoundland will exceed four hundred pounds in weight, and measure over four feet in height at the shoulder. I have seen a cariboo in Nova Scotia that must have considerably exceeded four feet six inches in height, and was thought by the Indian at a distance off to have been a moose.

Reindeer of a similar development, and in colour closely resembling the cariboo of Eastern America, were met with by Erman in Eastern Asia, where they are used for the saddle (placed on the shoulder—the only part of the back where the deer can support a load) by the Tunguzes. He states that the Lapland reindeer of menageries and museums appeared to him but dwarfs in comparison with those of Northern Asia, and with their size and strength seemed also to have lost much of their beauty of form. Certainly the cariboo of Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, as I have seen them, gracefully trotting over the plains on light snow, and in Indian file, or, when alarmed, circling round the hunter with neck and head braced up and scut erect, stepping with an astonishing elasticity and spring, is a noble creature in comparison with the specimens of the reindeer of Northern Europe that have appeared in the Society's gardens at Regent's Park: they are, nevertheless, indubitably the same species and simply local variations.

The colour of the American cariboo, as described by Audubon and Bachman, is as follows :—

“Tips of hairs light dun gray, whiter on the neck than elsewhere ; nose, ears, outer surface of legs and shoulders brownish. Neck and throat dull white; a faint whitish patch on the side of shoulders. Belly and tail white; a band of white around all the legs adjoining the hoofs.” From this general description there is, however, considerable variation. Bucks in their prime are often of a rich, rufous-brown hue on the back and legs, having the neck and pendant mane, tail and rump, snow-white. A patch of dark hair, nearly black, appears on the side of the muzzle and cheek. As the hair grows in length, towards the approach of winter, it lightens considerably in hue: individuals may frequently be seen in a herd with coats of the palest fawn colour, almost white. Young deer are dappled on the side and flank with light sandy spots. The white mane, reaching to over a foot in length in old males, which hangs pendant from the neck with a graceful one of the handsomest of animals; for when one sees a Tunguze sit, with the proudest deportment, on his reindeer, they both seem made for each other, and it is hard to decide whether the reindeer lends grace to the rider or borrows it from him.”—Travels in Siberia, by Adolph Erman.

The horns of different specimens vary greatly in form both as regards the development of palmation and the position of the principal branches. As a general rule, the horns of the Norwegian reindeer are (according to my impression) less subject to palmation of the main shaft, which is longer, and broadens only at the top where the principal tines are thrown off. I have, however, met with precisely the same form in antlers from the Labrador. The accompanying figures will illustrate the forms alluded to. The middle snag of the cariboo’s horn is also more developed than in the case of the European variety.

In most instances there is but one well-developed brow antler, the other being a solitary curved prong; sometimes, however, as shown in the illustration, very handsome specimens occur of two perfect brow snags meeting in front of the forehead, the prongs interweaving like the fingers of joined hands.

Except in the case of the does and young bucks, which retain theirs till spring, it is seldom that horns are seen in a herd of cariboo after Christmas. The reason to which the retention of the horns by the female reindeer during winter has been attributed by some speculative writers—namely, in order to clear away the deep encrusted snow, and enable her fawns to get at the moss beneath —is simply wrong. The animal never uses any other means than its hoofs to scrape for its moss; whilst the thin sharp prongs of the doe would prove anything but an efficient shovel. The latter and true mode of proceeding I have often watched when worming through the bushes

round the edge of a barren to get a shot. Both Mr. Barnard, and the author of “ Ten Years in Sweden,” allude to the female reindeer using her horns in winter to protect the fawns from the males, thus rightly accounting for this singular provision of nature in the case of a gregarious species in which the males, females, and young herd together at all seasons.

Another misrepresentation has appeared with regard to the reindeer : it has been compared, when obliged to cross a lake on ice, to a cat on walnut-shells! I cannot conceive any variation in a point so intimately connected with its winter habits on the part of the European reindeer, if the two are, as I believe, identical in configuration and subservience to existence under precisely similar circumstances; but for the cariboo I can aver that its foot is a beautiful adaptation to the snow-covered country in which it resides, and that on ice it has naturally an advantage similar to that obtained artificially by the skater. In winter time the frog is almost entirely absorbed, and the edges of the hoof, now quite concave, grow out in thin sharp ridges; each division on the under surface presenting the appearance of a huge mussel-shell. According to “The Old Hunter,” who has kindly forwarded to me some specimens shot by himself in Newfoundland in the fall of 1867 for comparison with examples of my own shot in winter, the frog is absorbed by the latter end of November, when the lakes are frozen ; the shell grows with great rapidity, and the frog does not fill up again till spring, when the antlers bud out. With this singular conformation of the foot, its great lateral spread, and the additional assistance afforded in maintaining a foot-hold on slippery surfaces by the long stiff bristles which grow downwards at the fetlock, curving forwards underneath between the divisions, the cariboo is enabled to proceed over crusted snow, to cross frozen lakes, or ascend icy precipices with an ease which places him, when in flight, beyond the reach of all enemies, except perhaps the nimble and untiring wolf.

The pace of the cariboo when started is like that of the moose, a long, steady trot, breaking into a brisk walk at intervals as the point of alarm is left behind. He sometimes gallops, or rather bounds, for a short distance at first; this the moose never does. When thoroughly alarmed, he will travel much further than the moose; the hunter having disturbed, missed, or slightly wounded the latter, may, by following him up, very probably get several chances again the same day. Such is seldom the case in cariboo hunting, even in districts where the animals are rarely disturbed. Once off, unless wounded, you do not see them again.

The cariboo feeds principally on the Cladonia rangi-ferina, with which barrens and all permanent clearings in the fir forest are thickly carpeted, and which appears to grow more luxuriantly in the subarctic regions than in more temperate latitudes. Mr. Hind, in “ Explorations in Labrador,” describes the beauty and luxuriance of this moss in the Laurentian country, “with admiration for which,” he says, “the traveller is inspired, as well as for its wonderful adaptation to the climate, and its value as a source of food to that mainstay of the Indian, and consequently of the fur trade in these regions—the caribou.” The recently-announced discovery by a French chemist who has succeeded in extracting alcohol in large quantities from lichens, and especially from the reindeer moss (identical in Europe with that of America), is interesting? and readily suggests the value of this primitive vegetation in supporting animal life in a Boreal climate as a lieat-producing food. Besides the above, which appears to be its staple food, the cariboo partakes of the tripe de roche (Sticla pulmonaria) and other parasitic lichens growing on the bark of trees, and is exceedingly fond of the Usnea, which grows on the boughs (especially affecting the top) of the black spruce, in long, pendant hanks. In the forests on the Cumberland Hills, in Nova Scotia, I have observed the snow quite trodden down during the night by the cariboo, which had resorted to feed on the “ old man's beards ” in the tops of the spruces felled by the lumberers on the day previous. In the same locality I have observed such frequent scratchings in the first light snow of the season at the foot of the trees in beech groves, that I am convinced that the animal, like the bear, is partial to the rich food afforded by the mast.

I am not aware that a favourite item of the diet of the Norwegian reindeer—Ranunculus glacialis—is found in America, and the woodland cariboo has no chance of exhibiting the strange but well-authenticated taste of the former animal by devouring the lemming; otherwise the habits of the two varieties are perfectly similar as regards food.

The woodland cariboo, like the Laplander s reindeer, is essentially a migratory animal. There are two well-defined periods of migration—in the spring and autumn—whilst throughout the winter it appears constantly seized with an unconquerable desire to change its residence.

The great periodic movements seem to result from an instinctive impulse of the reindeer throughout its whole circumpolar range. Sir J. Richardson, in America, Erman and Yon Wrangell, in Northern Europe and Asia—the three distinguished savants who have contributed so largely to the natural history of the northern regions— all affirm the regularity of its migrations to the open steppes, barren grounds, and bare mountains, and point to the chief cause—a desire to escape the insupportable torments of the flies which swarm in the forest. In Newfoundland the cariboo acts in a manner precisely similar to that described by Wrangell, in speaking of the reindeer of the Aniui. They leave the lake country and broad savannahs of the interior for the mountain range which covers the long promontory terminating at the Straits of Belleisle, at the commencement of summer, and return when warned by the frosts of September to seek the lowlands. At this time the deer passes, and valleys at the head of the Bay of Exploits may be seen thick with deer moving in long strings; and here the Red Indians of a past age, like the hunters of the Aniui, would congregate to kill their winter's supply of venison.

With regard to the restlessness of this animal at intervals in the forest country in winter time, I have frequently observed a sudden and contemporary shift of all the cariboo throughout a large area of country. One day quietly feeding through the forest in little bands, the next, perhaps, all tracks would show a general move in a certain direction; the deer joining their parties after a while, and entirely leaving the district, travelling in large herds towards new feeding-grounds, almost invariably down the wind. The little Arctic reindeer of North America is far less migratory in its habits than the larger species, and with the musk-sheep (ovibos) remains in the same localities throughout, the year.

In forest districts, in many parts of its range over the Northern American continent, the cariboo is found together with the moose in the same woodlands. They appear, however, to avoid each other's company; and I have observed in following the tracks of a travelling band of cariboo, that, on passing a fresh moose-yard, they have broken into a trot—a sure sign of alarm. In many districts, especially those in which the existing southern limits of the cariboo are marked, this animal is gradually disappearing, whilst the moose is taking its place. To a great extent this is the result of an increasing settlement of the country by man. The moose is a much more domestic animal in its habits, and will remain and multiply in any small forest district, however the latter may be surrounded by roads or settlements ; whereas the cariboo is a great wanderer, and requires long and unbroken ranges of wild country in which he can uninterruptedly indulge his vagrant habits. Being moreover more jealous of the advance of civilisation than the moose, he is surely disappearing as his old lines of periodic migration are encroached upon and broken by new settlements and their connecting roads.

In winters of great severity the cariboo always travel to the southernmost limits of their haunts, which they occasionally exceed and enter the settlements. Some years ago, during an unusually cold winter, the deer crossed in large bands from Labrador into Newfoundland over the frozen straits. As assumed by Dr. Gray, a variety appears to be established in the case of

the Newfoundland cariboo. These deer certainly attain a greater development than the generality of the specimens shot on the continent: I have heard of bucks weighing six hundred pounds, and even over. The general colour of the former animals is lighter—to be accounted for, perhaps, by the fact that Newfoundland is a far more open country than the eastern parts of Canada and the Lower Provinces. The herds are moreover comparatively undisturbed, and the moss grows in the greatest profusion. I have seen the fat taken off the loins of a Newfoundland deer o the depth of two inches. Further particulars concerning the cariboo on this island and its migrations will be found in a chapter on Newfoundland.