[Illustration: REINDEER.]
The Reindeer is of about the size of the Red Deer, but its legs are
shorter and thicker. The horns, which exist in both sexes, are divided
into several branches; at first they are slender and pointed, but as
they grow they extend, and ultimately terminate in broad and toothed
palmations. The hair of this animal, which is brown in summer, becomes
almost white as winter approaches—a circumstance which accounts for the
idea among the ancients, that the “Tarandus” could assume any color it
thought proper.
The Reindeer is met with only in the extreme north of Europe and of
America. It is more especially a native of Lapland, where it is as
serviceable to the sojourner in those icy regions as the Camel to the
inhabitants of the sandy desert. The Laplanders keep numerous flocks of
them, drive them in summer-time to the mountains of their country, and
in winter cause them to return to the plains, where they use them as
beasts of burden and of draught, eat their flesh, feed their children
with their milk, and clothe themselves with their skins. “These useful
animals,” says Mr. Lloyd, “not only mainly contribute to the
subsistence, but constitute the chief riches of that nomade people.
Without the Reindeer, indeed, the Lapp could hardly contrive to exist in
the dreary region he inhabits, the needful provender being too scanty to
admit of the well-being of other animals, such as Sheep and horned
Cattle, which in more southern countries are made subservient to the
purposes of Man.”
“A large herd of Reindeer,” says Lloyd in his Scandinavian Adventures,
“traversing the open country or the surface of a frozen lake, as the
case may be, when the Lapp is changing his encampment, is a very
magnificent sight. In the front walks a Man leading a Reindeer, or
perhaps the Man quite alone, who only now and then calls to the animals,
which, at a few paces’ distance, faithfully follow where he leads.
“In the first ranks of the herd one commonly sees many noble males, who
proudly elevate their heads, attired with large and branching antlers.
The rest of the herd follow one another in close phalanx. It resembles a
wondrous moving forest, whose innumerably branched crowns, with their
rapid and constantly shifting motion, make the most pleasing impression
on the eye and mind of the spectator.
“The Lapp sometimes calls a great herd of Reindeer a sava, or sea, a
figurative expression, beautiful as faithful; taken, probably, not only
from the immensity of the ocean, but from its surface being in constant
undulatory motion.”