ole. This landed four more of his friends in the same
honest and public-spirited occupation which he was himself pursuing;
though all escaped shortly afterwards by paying fines to the
Government which aggregated some eight hundred dollars--which sum was
largely paid by others for them.

There was no way, however, definitely to stop the steady decrease in
the numbers of the herd; and though we moved them to new pastures
around the coast, and fenced them in such small mobile corrals as we
could afford, they were not safe. On several occasions we found dead
deer with buckshot in them, which had "fallen over the cliffs." Twice
we discovered that deer had even been killed within our own corral.
One had been successfully removed, and the other trussed-up carcass
had been hidden until a good opportunity offered for it to follow
suit. I do not wish to leave the impression on the minds of my readers
that every man on this part of the coast is a poacher. Far from it.
But the majority of the best men were against the reindeer experiment
from the moment that the first trouble arose. A new obligation of
social life was introduced. This implied restraint in such trifling
things as their having to fence their tiny gardens, protect small
stray hay-pooks, and discriminate into what they discharged their
ubiquitous blunderbusses.

Meanwhile the steadily increasing demand for meat, especially since
the war began, caused outside interest in the experiment; and both the
owners of Anticosti Island, and a firm in the West who were commencing
reindeer farming on a commercial basis, opened negotiations with us
for the purchase of our herd. In the original outlay, however, the
Canadian Dominion Government had taken an interest to the amount of
five thousand dollars, so it was necessary to get their opinion on the
subject. Their Department of Indian Affairs happened to be looking for
some satisfactory way of helping out their Labrador Indian population.
They sent down and made inquiries, and came to the conclusion that
they would themselves take the matter up, as they had done with
buffalo, elk, and other animals in the West.

In 1917 all preparations for transferring the deer were made, but war
conditions called their steamer away and transport was delayed until
1918. Again their steamer was called off, so we decided to take the
deer across ourselves in our splendid three-masted schooner, the
George B. Cluett. She, alas, was delayed in Americ