The skins are very valuable—there is no better nonconductor of heat. The centre of the hair is not a hollow cylinder, but a series of air bubbles which do not soak water, and therefore can be used with advantage for life-saving cushions. The skins are splendid also for motor robes, and now invaluable in the air service. The meat is tender and appetizing, and sold as a game delicacy in New York. The deer fatten well on the abundant mosses of a country such as ours.
Sir William MacGregor, the Governor of Newfoundland at the time, had samples of the mosses collected around the coast and sent to Kew Botanical Gardens for positive identification. The Cladonia Rangiferina, or Iceland moss, proved very abundant. It was claimed, however, that the reindeer would eat any of such plants and shrubs as our coast offers in summer.
As long ago as the year 1903 my interest in the domestication of deer had led me to experiment with a young caribou. We had him on the Strathcona nearly all one summer. He was a great pet on board, and demonstrated how easily trained these animals are. He followed me about like a dog, and called after me as I left the ship's side in a boat if we did not take him with us. He was as inquisitive as a monkey or as the black bear which we had had two years before. We twice caught him in the chart-room chewing up white paper, for on his first raid there he had found an apple just magnanimously sent us from the shore as a delicacy.
Friends, inspired by Mr. William Howell Reed, of Boston, collected the money for a consignment of reindeer, and we accordingly sent to Lapland to purchase as many of the animals as we could afford. The expense was not so much in the cost of the deer as in the transport. They could not be shipped till they had themselves hauled down to the beach enough moss to feed them on their passage across the Atlantic. Between two hundred and fifty and three hundred were purchased, and three Lapp families hired to teach some of our local people how to herd them. When at last snow enough fell for the sledges to haul the moss down to the landwash, it was dark all day around the North Cape.
Fifty years hence in all probability the Lapps will be an extinct race, as even within the past twelve or fifteen years, districts in which thousands of domesticated reindeer grazed, now possess but a few hundreds.
The good ship Anita, which conveyed the herd to us, steamed in for southern Newfoundland and then worked her way North as far as the ice would permit. At St. Anthony everything was frozen up, and the men walked out of the harbour mouth on the sea ice to meet the steamer bringing the deer. The whole three hundred were landed on the ice in Crémaillière, some three miles to the southward of St. Anthony Hospital, and though many fell through into the sea, they proved hardy and resourceful enough to reach the land, where they gathered around the tinkling bells of the old deer without a single loss from land to land.
One of our workers at St. Anthony that winter wrote that "the most exciting moment was when the woman was lowered in her own sledge over the steamer's side on to the ice, drawn to the shore, and transferred to one of Dr. Grenfell's komatiks, as she had hurt her leg on the voyage. The sight of all the strange men surrounding her frightened her, but she was finally reassured, threw aside her coverings, and clutched her frying-pan, which she had hidden under a sheepskin. When she had it safely in her arms she allowed the men to lift her and put her on the komatik." When the doctor at the hospital advised that her leg would best be treated by operation, the man said, "She is a pretty old woman, and doesn't need a very good leg much longer." She was thirty-five!
An Irish friend had volunteered to come out and watch the experiment in our interest—and this he did most efficiently. The deer flourished and increased rapidly. Unfortunately the Lapps did not like our country. They complained that North Newfoundland was too cold for them and they wanted to return home. One family left after the first year. A rise in salary kept three of the men, but the following season they wanted more than we had funds to meet, and we were forced to decide, wrongly, I fear, to let them go. The old herder warned me, "No Lapps, no deer"; but I thought too much in terms of Mission finances, the Government having withdrawn their grant toward the herders' salaries. Trusting to the confidence in their own ability of the locally trained men, I therefore let the Lapp herders go home. The love of the Lapps for their deer is like a fisherman's for his vessel, and seems a master passion. They appeared even to grudge our having any deer tethered away from their care.
To us it seemed strange that these Lapps always contended that the work was too hard, and that the only reason that they were always gone from camp was that there were no wolves to keep the herd together. They claimed that we must have a big fence or the deer would go off into the country. They, of course, both when with us and in Lapland as well, lived and slept where the herd was. They told us that the deer no longer obeyed the warning summons of the old does' bells, having no natural enemy to fear; and one told me, "Money no good, Doctor, if herd no increase." Reindeer seemed to be the complement of their souls.
Meanwhile the Alaskan experiment was realizing all of Dr. Jackson's happiest hopes; but it had a strong Government grant and backing and plenty of skilled superintendence. The lack of those were our weaknesses. Our deer thrived splendidly and multiplied as we had predicted. We went thirty miles in a day with them with ease. We hauled our firewood out, using half a dozen hauling teams every day. Every fortnight during the rush of patients at the hospital in summer we could afford to kill a deer. The milk was excellent in quality and sweet, and preserved perfectly well in rubber-capped bottles. The cheese was nourishing and a welcome addition to the local diet. At the close of the fourth year we had a thousand deer.