How! This is the history of each case: The Caribou is so much swifter than the Wolves that the latter have no chance in open chase; they therefore adopt the stratagem of a sneaking surround and a drive over the rocks or a precipice, where the Caribou, if not actually killed, is more or less disabled. In some cases only a leg is broken, and then the Caribou knows his only chance is to reach the water. Here his wonderful powers of swimming make him easily safe, so much so that the Wolves make no attempt to follow. The crippled deer makes for some island sanctuary, where he rests in peace till his leg is healed, or it may be, in some cases, till the freezing of the lake brings him again into the power of his floe.

These six, then, were the cripples in hospital, and I hope our respectful behaviour did not inspire them with a dangerously false notion of humanity.

On the island that I have called Owl-and-Hare, we saw the first
White Owl and the first Arctic Hare.

In this country when you see a tree, you know perfectly well it is not a tree; it's the horns of a Caribou. An unusually large affair of branches appeared on an island in the channel to Aylmer. I landed, camera in hand; the Caribou was lying down in the open, but there was a tuft of herbage 30 yards from him, another at 20 yards. I crawled to the first and made a snapshot, then, flat as a rug, sneaked my way to the one estimated at 20 yards. The click of the camera, alarmed the buck; he rose, tried the wind, then lay down again, giving me another chance. Having used all the films, I now stood up. The Caribou dashed away and by a slight limp showed that he was in sanctuary. The 20-yard estimate proved too long; it was only 16 yards, which put my picture a little out of focus.

There never was a day, and rarely an hour of each day, that we did not see several Caribou. And yet I never failed to get a thrill at each fresh one. "There's a Caribou," one says with perennial intensity that is evidence of perennial pleasure in the sight. There never was one sighted that did not give us a happy sense of satisfaction—the thought "This is what we came for."

CHAPTER XXXIV

AYLMER LAKE

One of my objects was to complete the ambiguous shore line of Aylmer Lake. The first task was to find the lake. So we left the narrows and pushed on and on, studying the Back map, vainly trying to identify points, etc. Once or twice we saw gaps ahead that seemed to open into the great inland sea of Aylmer. But each in turn proved a mere bay.—On August 12 we left the narrows; on the 13th and 14th we journeyed westward seeking the open sea. On the morning of the 15th we ran into the final end of the farthest bay we could discover and camped at the mouth of a large river entering in.

As usual, we landed—Preble, Billy, and I—to study topography, Weeso to get firewood, and curiously enough, there was more firewood here than we had seen since leaving Artillery Lake. The reason of this appeared later.

I was utterly puzzled. We had not yet found Aylmer Lake, and had discovered an important river that did not seem to be down on any map.