The caribou I am speaking of now are all woodland caribou--larger,
finer animals every way than the barren-ground caribou of the desolate
unwooded regions farther north. In summer they live singly, rearing
their young in deep forest seclusions. There each one does as he
pleases. So when you meet a caribou in summer, he is a different
creature, and has more unknown and curious ways than when he runs with
the herd in midwinter. I remember a solitary old bull that lived on
the mountain-side opposite my camp one summer, a most interesting
mixture of fear and boldness, of reserve and intense curiosity. After
I had hunted him a few times, and he found that my purpose was wholly
peaceable, he took to hunting me in the same way, just to find out who
I was, and what queer thing I was doing. Sometimes I would see him at
sunset on a dizzy cliff across the lake, watching for the curl of
smoke or the coming of a canoe. And when I dove in for a swim and went
splashing, dog-paddle way, about the island where my tent was, he
would walk about in the greatest excitement, and start a dozen times
to come down; but always he ran back for another look, as if
fascinated. Again he would come down on a burned point near the deep
hole where I was fishing, and, hiding his body in the underbrush,
would push his horns up into the bare branches of a withered shrub,
so as to make them inconspicuous, and stand watching me. As long as he
was quiet, it was impossible to see him there; but I could always make
him start nervously by flashing a looking-glass, or flopping a fish in
the water, or whistling a jolly Irish jig. And when I tied a bright
tomato can to a string and set it whirling round my head, or set my
handkerchief for a flag on the end of my trout rod, then he could not
stand it another minute, but came running down to the shore, to stamp,
and fidget, and stare nervously, and scare himself with twenty alarms
while trying to make up his mind to swim out and satisfy his burning