By comparing and combining the above testimonies, it appears to me, that the forests of Gaul and Germany were stocked with elks and rein-deer, and that the passages in Cæsar’s Commentaries, can only be applied to those two animals. As the land was cultivated, and the waters became gradually dried up, the temperature of the climate became more mild, and those animals, who delight in cold, immediately abandoned the flat countries, and retired into the snowy region, where they lived in the time of Gaston de Foix; and if they are no longer to be found there, it is because this temperature has been ever since increasing in heat by the almost entire destruction of the forests, by the successive lowering of the mountains, the diminution of the waters, the multiplication of mankind, and by the continual increase of culture, and every other improvement. I am likewise of opinion that Pliny has borrowed from Cæsar almost all he has written of these two animals, and that he was the first author of the confusion in their names. He mentions at the same time the alce and the machlis, from which we ought naturally to conclude, that these two names mean two different animals: however, if we remark, 1. That he only simply names the alce without any description whatever. 2. That he alone has used the name machlis, which word is not to be found in either Greek or Latin, but appears to be coined, and which, according to Pliny’s commentators, is changed into that of alce in many ancient manuscripts. 3. That he attributes to the machlis all what Julius Cæsar gives to the alce; we cannot doubt but the passage in Pliny is corrupted, and that these two names mean the same animal, namely, the elk. This question once decided will also decide another. The machlis being the elk, the tarandus must be the rein-deer. This name of tarandus is not to be found in any author before Pliny, and in the interpretation of which, authors have greatly varied; however, Agricola and Elliot have not hesitated to apply it to the rein-deer; and for the reasons just deduced, we subscribe to their opinion. Besides, we must not be surprised at the silence of the Greeks on the subject of these two animals, nor at the ambiguity with which the Latins have spoken of them, since the northern climates were absolutely strangers to the first, and only known to the second by relation.
The elk is only found on this, and the rein-deer on the other, side of the polar circle in Europe and in Asia. We find them in America, in the lower latitudes, because the cold is greater there than in Europe. The rein-deer can bear the most excessive cold; he is found in Spitsbergen; he is common in Greenland, and in the most northern parts of Lapland and Asia. The elk does not approach so near the pole; he inhabits Norway, Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, and all the provinces of Siberia and Tartary, even to the north of China. We meet with him under the name of Orignal, and the rein-deer under that of Caribou in Canada, and in all the northern parts of America. Those naturalists, who doubted whether the Orignal was the elk, and the Caribou the rein-deer, had not compared Nature with the testimonies of travellers. These are certainly the same animals, though like all the rest in the New Continent smaller than those in the Old.
We may form a more perfect idea of the elk and rein-deer, by comparing them with the stag; the elk is taller, thicker, and stands more erect upon his legs; his neck is shorter, his hair longer, and his antlers wider and heavier than those of the stag. The rein-deer is shorter, his legs are smaller and thicker, and his feet much larger; his hair is very thickly furnished, and his horns much longer and divided into a great number of branches, with flat terminations; while those of the elk appear to have been cut or broached at the edges. Both have long hair under the neck, short tails, and ears much longer than those of the stag; they do not leap nor bound like the roe-buck, but their pace is a kind of trot, so easy and quick, that they go over almost as much ground in the same time, without being in the least fatigued; for they will sometimes continue their trot for two days together, without resting. The rein-deer lives upon the mountains; and the elk dwells in low lands and damp forests; both go in herds like the stags, and both can be tamed, but the rein-deer with greater ease than the elk. The last, like the stag, has never lost his liberty, while the rein-deer has been rendered domestic by the most unenlightened part of mankind. The Laplanders have no other cattle. In this icy climate, which receives only the oblique rays of the sun, where the night and the day comprehend two seasons; where the snow covers the earth from the beginning of autumn to the end of spring, and where the verdure of the summer consists in the bramble, juniper, and moss, where could man expect to procure necessary nourishment for cattle? The horse, the ox, the sheep, and all the other useful animals, could not find subsistence there, nor resist the rigour of the cold; it was therefore necessary to search among the inhabitants of the forest for the least wild and profitable animals; the Laplanders have done what we should be obliged to do ourselves if we were to lose our cattle; we should then be forced to tame the stags, and the roe-bucks of our forests to supply their place; this I am persuaded, we should easily accomplish, and soon derive as much advantage from them as the Laplanders do from their rein-deer. This example ought to make us sensible how far Nature has extended her liberality towards us; we do not make use of one half her treasure, for her bounty is more immeasurable than we can imagine; she has bestowed on us the horse, the ox, the sheep, and all other domestic animals, to serve, to feed, and clothe us; and she has other species in reserve, which would ably supply the deficiency, and which only require us to subdue, and make them useful to our wants. Man is not acquainted with the powers of Nature, nor how far her productions are to be improved by the exertions of his capacity; instead of exploring her unknown treasures, he is constantly abusing those with which he is acquainted.
By comparing the advantages which the Laplanders derive from the rein-deer with those we experience from the domestic animals, we shall see that he is worth two or three of them. He is used as a horse to draw sledges and carriages; he travels with great speed and swiftness, travelling thirty leagues a day with ease, and runs with as much certainty on frozen snows as upon the mossy down. The female affords milk more substantial and nourishing than that of the cow. The flesh is excellent food. His hair makes an exceeding good fur, and his hide makes a very supple and durable leather. Thus the rein-deer alone affords all that we derive from the horse, the ox, and the sheep.
The manner in which the Laplanders rear and train these animals deserves our particular attention. Olaus, Schæffer, and Regnard, have given interesting details on this subject, of which the following is an abstract: The horns of the rein-deer, say these authors, are larger and divided into a greater number of branches than those of the stag. The food of this animal, in the winter season, is a white moss, which he finds under the deepest snow, and which he ploughs up with his horns, or digs up with his feet. In summer he lives upon the buds and leaves of trees in preference to herbs, which his forward spreading horns will not permit him to brouze on with facility. He runs upon the snow and sinks but little, by reason of his broad feet. These animals are very mild, and are kept in herds, which turn out greatly to the profit of their owners; the milk, hide, sinews, bones, hoofs, horns, hair, and the flesh, are all useful and good. The richest Laplanders have herds of four or five hundred, and the poorest have ten or twelve. They are led out to pasture, and shut up in inclosures during the night, to shelter them from the outrages of the wolves. If taken to another climate they die in a short time. Many centuries since, Steno, prince of Sweden, sent six to Frederic, duke of Holstein; and more recently, in 1533, Gustavus, king of Sweden, sent ten over to Prussia, both males and females; but they all perished, without producing either in a domestic or free state. “I would fain (says M. Regnard) have brought some rein-deer alive into France; many persons have in vain attempted it, and last year three or four were conducted to Dantzic, where they soon died, not being able to bear the heat of that climate.”
There are both wild and tame rein-deer in Lapland. In the rutting season the females are let loose to seek the wild males in the woods; and as these wild males are more robust, and stronger than the domestic ones, the breed from this mixture are preferred for harness. These rein-deer are not so gentle as the others, for they not only sometimes refuse to obey those who guide them, but often turn and furiously attack them with their feet, so that they have no other resource than to cover themselves with the sledge until the fury of the beast is subsided. This sledge is so light that the Laplander can with ease turn it over himself; the bottom of it is covered with the skins of young rein-deers, the hair of which is turned backwards, so that the sledge glides easily forwards, and is prevented from recoiling on the mountains. The harness of the rein-deer is only a collar made of the skin, with the hairs remaining on it, from whence a trace is brought under the belly, between the legs, and fastened to the fore part of the sledge. The Laplander has only a single cord, as a rein, fastened to the animal’s horn, which he throws sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other of the beast, according as he would direct him to the right or left. They can travel four or five leagues an hour; but the quicker he goes the more inconvenient is the motion, and a person must be well accustomed, and travel often, to be able to sit in the sledge, and prevent it from turning over.
The rein-deer have outwardly many things in common with the stag, and the formation of their interior parts is nearly the same. From this conformity of Nature, analogous customs and similar effects result. The rein-deer sheds his horns every year like the stag, and, like him, makes very good venison. The rutting season of both is towards the end of September. The females of both species go eight months with young, and produce but one at a birth. The males have the same disgustful smell in their rutting time; and among the female rein-deer there are also found some who are barren. The young rein-deer, like the young fawns of the stag, are variously coloured; it is at first of a reddish colour, and becomes, as they grow old, almost of an entire brown. The young follow their mothers two or three years, and they do not attain their full growth till the age of four; it is at this age that they begin to dress and exercise them for labour. In order to render them more manageable they are castrated when young, which operation the Laplanders perform with their teeth. The uncastrated males are very difficult to manage, and they therefore make use only of those which are gelded, among which they choose the most lively and nimble to draw their sledges, and the more heavy to carry their provisions and baggage. They keep only one stallion rein-deer for five or six females. These animals are troubled with an insect, called the gad-fly, who burrowing under their skins deposit their eggs, so that sometimes by the end of winter the worms that proceed from them render their skins as full of holes as a sieve.
The herds of rein-deer require a great deal of care; they are subject to elope, and voluntarily strive to regain their natural liberty: they must be closely attended, and narrowly watched, and never led to pasture but in open places; and in case the herd is numerous they have need of many persons to keep them together, and to run after those which attempt to stray. They are all marked, that they may be known again, for it often happens that they stray in the woods, or mix with other herds. In short, the Laplanders are continually occupied in the care of their rein-deer, which constitute all their wealth, and they know well how to procure every convenience, or, more properly, all the necessities of life, from these animals. In the winter season they cloath themselves from head to foot with the furs of the rein-deer, which are impenetrable to frost or rain; and in summer they make use of the hides from which the fur has fallen off. They also spin the hair, and cover the sinews which they take from the body of the dead animal, for cordage and thread. They eat the flesh, drink the milk, and of the latter they also make very rich cheese. This milk, when churned, gives, instead of butter, a kind of suet. This particularly, as well as the largeness of the horns, and the plenty of fat he affords at the beginning of the rutting season, are so many proofs of the superabundance of nourishment; and what still more strongly proves his superabundance to be excessive, or at least greater than any other species, is that the rein-deer is the only animal where the female has horns as well as the male, and this last is the only one also who sheds his horns and renews them even when castrated. For in stags, fallow-deer, and roe-bucks, who have undergone this operation, the horns of the animal remain always in the same state they were at the moment of castration. Thus the rein-deer is, of all animals, that in which the superfluity of nutritive matter is the most apparent, and this, perhaps, is less owing to the nature of the animal than to the quality of its food, for the white moss, which is his only aliment during the winter, is a lichen, whose substance resembles that of the mushroom; it is very nourishing, and is more loaded with organic molecules, than the leaves or buds of trees, and it is for this reason that the rein-deer has larger horns, and affords more fat than the stag; and that the females, and those that are castrated, are not deprived of horns: it is the cause also of the great variety that is found in the size of the horns, and of the figure and number of the branches, beyond what is possessed by any other of the deer kind. The males who had been neither hunted nor confined, and who feed amply, and at pleasure, on this substantial aliment, have prodigious large horns, which extend backward as far as the crupper, and forwards beyond the muzzle. Those which are gelded have smaller horns, yet much larger than the stag, and those of the females are still less. Thus the horns of the rein-deer, differ not only, like others, according to age, but also according to sex and castration. The horns, therefore, are so exceedingly different in individuals, that it is not to be wondered at that authors have differed so much upon this subject.
Another singularity, which is common to the rein-deer and the elk, we must not omit. When these animals run, their hoofs at every step make a crackling noise, as if all their limbs were disjointed; and it is this noise, or perhaps the scent, which informs the wolves of their approach, who way-lay them, and if the wolves are many in number, they will attack and kill him; for the rein-deer is able to defend himself against a single wolf, not, as may be imagined, with his horns, for they are rather of disservice than of use, but with his fore-feet, which are very strong, and with which he strikes the wolf with such force, as to stun, or drive him away; after which he flies with such speed as to be no longer in danger of being overtaken. He has a more dangerous, though a less numerous, and a less frequent enemy, in the rosomack, or glutton; this animal is more voracious, but heavier than the wolf; he does not pursue the rein-deer, but conceals himself in a tree, and waits the arrival of his prey; as soon as the rein-deer comes within his reach, he darts upon him, fastens himself with his nails upon his back, and tearing his head or neck with his teeth, never quits his place till he has killed him. He makes the like attacks, and uses the stratagems to conquer the elk, who is stronger than the rein-deer. This rosomack, or glutton of the north, is the same animal as the carcajou or quincajou, of North America; his battles with the orignal are celebrated; and, as we have formerly said, the orignal of Canada is the same as the elk of Europe. It is singular, that this animal, who is scarce bigger than a badger, is able to conquer an elk, whose size exceeds that of a horse, and whose strength is so great, that with a single stroke of his foot he can kill a wolf. But it is attested by so many authorities, that we cannot have the least doubt of its being the fact.
The elk and rein-deer are both ruminating animals, as their method of feeding, and the formation of their interior parts demonstrate; nevertheless, Tornæus Scheffer, Regnard, Hulden, and others, have affirmed, that the rein-deer does not ruminate. Ray justly declares this to be incredible; and, in fact, the rein-deer does ruminate like every other animal who has many stomachs. A domestic rein-deer does not live more than fifteen or sixteen years, but it must be presumed, that his life is of a longer duration in a wild state; for this animal being four years before he arrives at his full growth, ought to live twenty-eight or thirty years when in his natural state. The Laplanders hunt the wild rein-deers by different methods, according to the difference of seasons. In the rutting season they make use of their domestic females to attract the wild males. They shoot them with the musket, or with the bow, and they deliver their arrows with such strength, that notwithstanding the thickness of their hair and hide, they often kill one of these beasts with a single arrow.