at a loss to account for. When he is old and feeble, and the tireless
muscles will no longer carry him with the herd over the wind-swept
barrens, and he falls sick at last, he goes to a spot far away in the
woods, where generations of his ancestors have preceded him, and there
lays him down to die. It is the caribou burying ground; and all the
animals of a certain district, or a certain herd (I am unable to tell
which), will go there when sick or sore wounded, if they have strength
enough to reach the spot. For it is far away from the scene of their
summer homes and their winter wanderings.

I know one such place, and visited it twice from my summer camp. It is
in a dark tamarack swamp by a lonely lake at the head of the
Little-South-West Miramichi River, in New Brunswick. I found it one
summer when trying to force my way from the big lake to a smaller one,
where trout were plenty. In the midst of the swamp I stumbled upon a
pair of caribou skeletons, which surprised me; for there were no
hunters within a hundred miles, and at that time the lake had lain for
many years unvisited. I thought of fights between bucks, and bull
moose, how two bulls will sometimes lock horns in a rush, and are too
weakened to break the lock, and so die together of exhaustion.
Caribou are more peaceable; they rarely fight that way; and, besides,
the horns here were not locked together, but lying well apart. As I
searched about, looking for the explanation of things, thinking of
wolves, yet wondering why the bones were not gnawed, I found another
skeleton, much older, then four or five more; some quite fresh, others
crumbling into mould. Bits of old bone and some splendid antlers were
scattered here and there through the underbrush; and when I scraped
away the dead leaves and moss, there were older bones and fragments
mouldering beneath.