Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/486

354 cold, we chose our warmest clothing, which was made from reindeer hide with the fur side in. We drew on seal waterproof boots. Our mittens were of the heaviest reindeer fur, and to protect our necks and shoulders, as well as our heads, we put on a “parki.” This is a hood attached to the fur coat, which is slipped on over the other garments and is belted in at the waist by a strong leather belt.

When we were ready for the long ride across the snow and ice, and filed out of the cabin door to take our places in the pulks, we looked like the contestants in a sack-race on their way to the track. In less than ten seconds we had jumped into our places in the sleds as the restless reindeer bounded by the knoll on which we stood, It taxed our agility to spring from the ground and light upon the seats of the sleds as they whirled past us.

Untamed and wholly unreliable beasts are these reindeer. One never feels a moment’s security when once he is seated in a pulk behind their flying legs, listening to the clattering of their hoofs on the hard snow, Ten miles an hour was the average speed that we made the first day, and that was quite rapid enough for us, we declared, when we considered the unbroken trail we had followed, and the dangers we narrowly escaped in spite of the precautions that, the guides had taken to insure us a safe journey.



Over the voiceless wilds of the snow-covered mountains, and toiling through the depths of treacherous ravines that more than once threatened to bury us alive, we were hauled up to safe ground by the struggling reindeer.

On one mountain-slope the deer scented a lichen-bed, and they promptly turned aside and with their front hoofs began to paw and scrape away the snow that covered it; and they would not go on until they had filled themselves with the lichen, while we sat helpless in the sleds and watched them browse until their sides swelled. Each reindeer was drawing about two hundred and fifty pounds, and that was a fair load with the snow as deep as it was.

Their obstinate scorn of everything but their appetite for the moss recalls to me, as I. write, Mr. F. Marion Crawford's account of how the Lapland reindeer sometimes break into an uncontrollable stampede for the Arctic Ocean. it is found in his story, “A Cigarette Maker's Romance,” and reads as follows:

In the distant northern plains, a hundred miles from the sea, in the midst of the Laplanders’ village, a young reindeer raises his broad muzzle to the north wind and stares at the limitless distance while a roan may count a hundred. He grows restless from that moment, but he is yet alone. The next day,a dozen of the herd look up from the cropping of the moss, snuffing the breeze. Then the Lapps nod to one another, and the camp grows daily more unquiet. At times the whole herd of young