REINDEER FOR KLONDIKE.
THE latest report from the bases whence relief expeditions or impatient prospectors must start next spring for Klondike deserves a place among what Frank Buckland called the "curiosities of natural history." To reach an ice-beleaguered goldfield in the north-western corner of Arctic America the Governments of two great nations, Canada and the United States, are sending agents to fetch half-wild reindeer, and Lapps, their half-wild owners, from the north-eastern corner of Arctic Europe. Before these indispensable animal-allies can do their work, they will cross the North Atlantic by steamer, from the North Cape to Halifax in Nova Scotia, then traverse the whole of Northern Canada by rail, once more embark, this time on the Pacific, and disembark a second time at some Alaskan port. This astonishing adventure is undertaken, first, because the reindeer are the only draught animals which can find food on the journey to Klondike, and secondly, because in the desperate race against time there is not an hour to spare in organising untrained herds. Broken reindeer, with their own Lapp owners and drivers, must be brought, or the
expedition will be too late to start from Dyea in March, when the Arctic days are lengthening. Regarded simply as an instance of enterprise, and of the practical shrinkage of distance measured by time, this attempt is interesting enough, and it is not without considerable chances of success. Mr. Kjelliman, formerly employed to introduce reindeer into Alaska, left for Europe on December 1st, caught the steamer for Hall on December 9th, and reached Trondhjem on December 12th. He then took the fast mail steamer to the North Cape, whence he was to travel inland by reindeer sledge to the headquarters of the Lap- landers' herds, purchase tame deer, and hire drivers. A specially chartered steamer will be in waiting to take the animals straight across the North Atlantic to Halifax, so that unless time is lost in collecting the deer, there is no reason to doubt that they can be ready at Dyea in time to start. Whether they will be in condition to do so after their voyages and travels is rather doubtful. The American authorities are confident that there will be no delay or difficulty in getting either deer or drivers. Mr. Kjelliman hopes to obtain two thousand of the former and two hundred drivers, as he is known and liked by the Norwegian Lapps, some of whom he formerly engaged to accompany him to Alaska and instruct the Indians and Esquimau' in the use of reindeer. Meantime the Canadian Government, at its wits' end to supply its own police force on the way to Klondike, has also sent an agent to Norway, who so far has forwarded six Lapps and a hundred and fourteen deer, and is to send an equal number as soon as he can get them.
Every one knows that all this trouble, expense, and hurry to obtain some two thousand five hundred medium-sized deer from the uttermost parts of the earth is due solely to one physical fact in natural history,—namely, that these deer can find food where no other beast of burden can. But the exact physical and local conditions which should make it possible for the deer to cross where two thousand horses are already lying dead from starvation are, we believe, the following. The road lies mainly beyond the northern limit of grass and trees. The reindeer will eat moss, and prefers it to other food. Moss, as we understand it, is rather an uncommon vegetable. It would be difficult, for instance, to find enough moss by an English roadside to feed one reindeer per diem, not to speak of hundreds. But once beyond a certain line on the Arctic fringe, moss is the one common form of vegetable life. Lichen is the more appropriate name, for it is a thick, whitish growth, springing up naturally, and often burnt by the Lapps over large tracts, just as Scotch shepherds burn the heather, to produce a thicker crop for the deer. It is the natural vegetable covering of the earth where earth, and not rock, is on the surface. And the Klondike climate is particularly favourable to this moss, which lies over the whole soil, an invisible vegetable lining, between the earth and the covering snow. It is so thick that even in summer, when the snow melts, this non-conducting layer of moss prevents the ground from thawing. Before the snow melts, as on the projected journey of the deer, they will be travelling over one vast carpet of snow-covered food ; and as each reindeer, male or female, has a third projecting palmated antler, or "snow-scraper," with a few sidelong sweeps of which it can brush away the snow, the herds have no trouble in reach- ing their food. A good reindeer will travel a hundred miles a day over frozen snow. When drawing burdens it will take a weight of 300 lb., though the Lapps prefer to limit it to 240 lb. One dollar per pound is now vainly offered for the transport of goods over the Chilkoot Pass ; and it must be remembered that the deer "find" their own board on the journey.
The Canadian Government cannot plead that the Klondike difficulty is a new one. It has been shirked in anticipation. For some years mines of extraordinary richness have been worked in Northern British Columbia, under such disad- vantages from lack of transport that the wonder is that they have been worked at all. Mr. Turner-Turner, writing recently in Country Life on his adventures as an amateur fur-trapper in the Eastern Hudson's Bay Territory, notes that the Indians there had nearly all abandoned trapping for the highly remunerative work of carrying packs on their backs to the mines ! And this with cariboo, or native reindeer, so numerous that Mr. Turner was able to kill any number to bait his traps. The reason for this substitution of man for animals as a beast of burden is partly the fault of the red man, who never domesticated any creature except the dog, though when the whites taught him how to ride he took to the business naturally. But it is clear that no one, not even the Canadian Government, was awake to the lessons of experience, that even in these days new countries cannot be developed in a hurry without recourse to the old servants of man, who are often transferred from very rude and barely civilised masters. In the case of the reindeer, both beasts and owners may be said to be only on the verge of domestication. In West Australia there is a flourishing colony of remarkably wild Afghans, who own and drive camels employed in transport to the mines and in prospectors' journeys. But a considerable number of camels had been accumulated in Australia before the Coolgardie goldfield was "approached in form." Canada, with any number of wild reindeer, presumably not differing in temperament from those of Europe and Asia, had never attempted to form the nucleus of a herd. Possibly the ancient monopoly of the northern territories by the Hudson's Bay Company, who desired not minerals or agriculture, or a large population, but furs and fur-bearing animals, may account for this neglect. The United States Government, who have been far more happy in their dealings with the Indians of Alaska than with those in the south and west, did some time ago establish trained herds of reindeer in Alaska. They introduced the deer from the opposite coast of Asia, where several tribes, notably the "reindeer Chukches," have large herds and employ them as their main beast of burden. For some reason they seem unable to draw a farther supply from this source, while almost all the deer in the Alaska depots are being driven north, not as beasts of burden, but to serve as food for the crews of five whaling ships icebound a hundred and fifty miles north of the northern point of Alaska.
It is quite inexplicable, though paralleled by the case of the failure of Africa even to maintain the use of the elephant, that while the use of the sledge dog is common to the northern regions of both the New and Old World, from Europe to Labrador, the use of the reindeer should never have spread among native races beyond the narrow straits of Behring's Sea. The value of animal service, and the com- pulsory reversion to its use, has never been more clearly shown than in recent years. Instead of becoming obsolete? the various beasts of burden have been the one thing needful —usually not there when wanted—in all kinds of great enter- prises, from the Arctic Circle to the Equator. Go-ahead people, mining engineers, company directors, railway con- tractors and prospectors, who would, if they could, use nothing leas progressive than a motor-car, have been offering fancy prices for oxen, mules, camels, reindeer, and even donkeys,. without whose aid untold millions in cash and shares must lie idle till quotations sink to nothing, or some rival field, where the necessary beasts can be had, attracts the investor elsewhere. Rhodesia hangs fire for need of the necessary mule and waggon transport, and will do so until the are provided ; for though the railway can bring up machinery, it will scarcely supply the miners with fresh food and vegetables, or fake the machinery to the pit mouth. Golden West Australia was developed by the aid of the- camel, Central Africa still remains a nation of the unemployed because no beast has yet been found to carry even such- produce as ivory to the coast, and even the rivers of Barmah could not have sufficed to develop the teak forests without the elephants to act as porters in the timber-yards. For- the present our view of the colonisation and development of new countries has gone back to the ideal of three centuries ago, one never fulfilled then, but realised now. It is that of the sudden discovery and rapid development of mineral wealth. Our older colonisation by agriculture created trans- port animals as it grew. Under the new conditions the animal factor is absolutely essential to the initial stages of development. The Spaniards found their Eldorado, not in a new country, but in an old one, and actually met the Peruvian troops of llamas descending the Andes with little bags of gold on their backs. But even in the Soudan, the native home of the camel, we cannot find transport on a scale suited to the sudden needs of the modern expansion of empire. To a. colonising and conquering nation like our own it is essential to maintain some sort of " stock " of every kind of transport, from camels to Esquimaux dogs, a need emphasised every few years, but always forgotten when the pinch is over.
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