eader, and to go where he goes
without question or hesitation. For the leaders on the barrens are
wise old bulls that make no mistakes. Most of the little caribou took
to the sport very well, and presently followed the mothers over the
low hurdles. But a few were timid; and then came the most intensely
interesting bit of the whole strange school, when a little one would
be led to a tree and butted from behind till he took the jump.

There was no "consent of the governed" in that governing. The mother
knew, and the calf didn't, just what was good for him.

It was this last lesson that broke up the school. Just in front of my
hiding place a tree fell out into the opening. A mother caribou
brought her calf up to this unsuspectingly, and leaped over, expecting
the little one to follow. As she struck she whirled like a top and
stood like a beautiful statue, her head pointing in my direction. Her
eyes were bright with fear, the ears set forward, the nostrils spread
to catch every tainted atom from the air. Then she turned and glided
silently away, the little one close to her side, looking up and
touching her frequently as if to whisper, _What is it? what is it?_
but making no sound. There was no signal given, no alarm of any kind
that I could understand; yet the lesson stopped instantly. The caribou
glided away like shadows. Over across the opening a bush swayed here
and there; a leaf quivered as if something touched its branch. Then
the schoolroom was empty and the woods all still.

There is another curious habit of Megaleep; and this one I am utterly
at a loss to account for. When he is old and feeble, and the tireless
muscles will no longer carry him with the herd over the wind-swept
barrens, and he falls sick at last, he goes to a spot far away in the
woods, where generations of his ancestors have preceded him, and there
lays him down to die. It is the caribou burying ground; and all the
animals of a certain district, or a certain herd (I am unable to tell
which), will go there when sick or sore wounded, if they have strength
enough to reach the spot. For it is far away from the scene of their
summer homes and their winter wanderings.

I know one such place, and visited it twice from my summer camp. It is
in a dark tamarack swamp by a lonely lake at the head of the
Little-South-West Miramichi River, in New Brunswick. I found it one
summer when trying to force my way from the big lake to a smaller one,
where trout were