"By the time you get this letter I shall be at home again, or at any rate in London. I have to commence my lecturing on December 4th, but if I can get a spare day before then I will come over and see you. My experience in Newfoundland was much the same as yours. I saw a lot of caribou, but no very large heads. I had, too, terribly bad weather, almost continuous rain and sleet storms on the high ground near George IV Lake. By-the-bye, Mr. Howley tells me that to the best of his belief I am the third white man who has visited that lake. The first was Cormack, who named it a long time ago, and the second Mr. Howley, who was there in 1875. The caribou in the country between King George's Lake and the head of the Victoria river live there. I saw non-travelling deer there, all the herds were stationary, feeding or lying down in one spot all day long. Lots of trees too along the river, where the stags had cleaned their horns. Packing in from Lloyd's river to the north-west, I struck some splendid caribou-ground. Here the deer were all on migration southwards. As a matter of fact, I did very little systematic hunting, but a lot of tramping, always carrying a 40 lb. pack myself. I have got one very pretty head of 36 points, very regular and symmetrical, but not large. In a storm of driving sleet it looked magnificent on the living stag. I have another head I like, and some others of lesser merit, one of them for the Natural History Museum. I have preserved a complete animal for them."
FOOTNOTES:
[52] As an instance of this I may mention that the greater number of the "hunting" Boers I lived with and knew well were captured in the Middelburg district in 1900 by a party of Steinacker's horse, who surprised the commando at dawn. All were captured except Commandant Roelef Van Staden, my former hunter, one of the finest men it has ever been my good fortune to meet in any land. He fought his way out single-handed and escaped. When brought into camp these Boers were well treated by Colonel Greenhill-Gardyne (Gordon Highlanders), who asked them if they knew me, to which they replied that I was the only Englishman they had ever known and that they would consider it a favour if he would kindly send a message of friendship to me, detailing their capture and certain misfortunes that had befallen some of their families in the war. They were also particularly anxious that I should know that Van Staden had escaped. This letter I treasure, for it shows that the Boers have no personal animosity to those who have once been their friends.
[53] This is very unusual, for in four seasons' hunting there, I never found the deer move at so early a date as September 15th.
[54] On the hills of Genna Gentu, the principal home of the Mouflon in Sardinia, the native shepherds allow their cattle and herds of sheep and goats to graze amongst the wild sheep and this constant disturbance keeps all creatures constantly on the move.
[55] Later he was persuaded to lend his heads for the exhibition, but few visitors saw the collection.
[56] I was so fortunate as to kill one of these caribou in the Tanzilla Mountains on the borders of Alaska, with fifty-three points, in 1908, but this was quite an exceptional head of an unusual type.
[57] This year I was hunting in the Gander forests about 75 miles south-east of King George IV Lake and saw an immense number of caribou stags, but only one with a first-class head, a 35-pointer, which I was fortunate enough to kill. Later in the season I saw most of the heads killed in the island and there was not a good one amongst them.