From time to time a wild hyena chorus from the
tranquil water in the purple sunset haze suggested, that a pack of
goblin hounds were chivying a goblin buck, but it turned out always
to be a family of Red-throated Loons, yodelling their inspiring
marching song.
One day when at Gravel Mountain, old Weeso came to camp in evident
fear - "far off he had seen a man." In this country a man must mean
an Eskimo; with them the Indian has a long feud; of them he is in
terror. We never learned the truth; I think he was mistaken.
Once or twice the long howl of the White Wolf sounded from the
shore, and every day we saw a few Caribou.
A great many of the single Caribou were on the small islands. In
six cases that came under close observation the animal in question
had a broken leg. A broken leg generally evidences recent inroads
by hunters, but the nearest Indians were 200 miles to the south, and
the nearest Eskimo 300 miles to the north. There was every reason
to believe that we were the only human beings in that vast region,
and certainly we had broken no legs. Every Caribou fired at (8) had
been secured and used. There is only one dangerous large enemy common
in this country; that is the White Wolf. And the more I pondered
it, the more it seemed sure that the Wolves had broken the Caribous'
legs.
How! This is the history of each case: The Caribou is so much swifter
than the Wolves that the latter have no chance in open chase; they
therefore adopt the stratagem of a sneaking surround and a drive
over the rocks or a precipice, where the Caribou, if not actually
killed, is more or less disabled. In some cases only a leg is
broken, and then the Caribou knows his only chance is to reach the
water. Here his wonderful powers of swimming make him easily safe,
so much so that the Wolves make no attempt to follow. The crippled
deer makes for some island sanctuary, where he rests in peace till
his leg is healed, or it may be, in some cases, till the freezing of
the lake brings him again into the power of his floe.
These six, then, were the cripples in hospital, and I hope our
respectful behaviour did not inspire them with a dangerously false
notion of humanity.
On the island that I have called Owl-and-Hare, we saw the first
White Owl and the first Arctic Hare.
In this country when you see a tree, you know perfectly well it is
not a tree; it's the horns of a Caribou. An unusually large affair
of branches appeared on an island in the channel to Aylmer. I landed,
camera in hand; the Caribou was lying down in the open, but there
was a tuft of herbage 30 yards from him, another at 20 yards.
I crawled to the first and made a snapshot, then, flat as a rug,
sneaked my way to the one estimated at 20 yards.
