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When I was a youngster of sixteen, a good sloop-sailor and all- round bay-waterman, my sloop, the Reindeer, was chartered by the Fish Commission, and I became for the time being a deputy patrolman.
I could not easily distinguish the men from the women, for the features of the women were coarse from exposure to the storms of the Arctic Sea. They wore reindeer trousers like the men, as indeed do the women of the nomadic Lapps. They rowed quite as well as the men, too. They were distinguishable by their long shaggy hair. It was of a dark chestnut, with a reddish tinge almost black in some.
After this meal we were presented with a lot of cooked reindeer meat for our journey, and one of the Lapps was to go with us, for he wanted to see some of his friends further south. Towards three o'clock in the morning we started. We saw many herds of reindeer they were moving westward towards the mountains that stretched to the Arctic Sea. It was a grand sight.
Last year at the same season and still later there had been very little snow on the ground and we were surrounded by vast herds of reindeer; now there were but few recent tracks of these animals and the snow was upwards of two feet deep. Winter River was then open, now it was frozen two feet thick.
As he whistled and shouted and cracked his whip again, he reviewed in mind all the towns and cities and farmhouses where he was expected, and figured that he had just enough presents to go around and make every child happy. The reindeer knew exactly what was expected of them, and dashed along so swiftly that their feet scarcely seemed to touch the snow-covered ground.
Who can doubt that the wild fowl come south because the north is frozen over? The Laplander and the reindeer migrate together; the Tartars migrate all the year through, crossing the steppes in winding and devious but fixed paths, paths settled for each family, and kept without a map, though invisible to strangers. It is only necessary to watch the common sparrow.
They took each other's hands and wandered out of the great palace; they talked about the grandmother and the roses on the leads, wherever they came the winds hushed and the sun came out. When they reached the bush with red berries there stood the reindeer waiting for them.
It was so cold that We had to sleep in our Reindeer sleeping bags through the night so occasionally we would have to unlace our bags and smoke up the wolves and then depend upon a little rest till they got too fresh again.
May 3d, we found water at a depth of eight feet, and on the 6th had to dig through eight and a half feet. This was the thickest ice we saw of one winter's formation. About noon of the 7th we ran into a herd of fourteen reindeer, lying down upon a hillside, and in less than three-quarters of an hour ten of them lay dead upon the field, and I believe those who got away carried some lead with them.
The reindeer are killed by the Esquimaux in great abundance in the summer season, partly by driving them from islands or narrow necks of land into the sea, and then spearing them from their canoes; and partly by shooting them from behind heaps of stones raised for the purpose of watching them and imitating their peculiar bellow or grunt.
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