austed from digging through the snow, as they are at the end of the
season. The rapidity of their gait depends very much also on the state
of the surface of the snow. If it is well packed and crisp, they go very
fast. Much depends, too, upon the distance and whether the country is
hilly or not, or with a long range of slopes. On the rivers, over well
packed snow, and a good track that has been furrowed by previous
reindeer, they can average twelve or fifteen miles an hour when in good
condition, sometimes twenty for the first hour; down a mountain slope
twenty and twenty-five. They can travel five or six hours without
stopping; the first hour very rapidly, the second more slowly, and
towards the fifth and sixth hours still more slowly, perhaps not more
than eight or ten miles an hour, for by that time they require rest and
food, and we unharness them in places where the snow is not deep, and
let them get their food. Early in the winter, when they are in good
condition, one can travel with a swift bull reindeer one hundred and
fifty miles in a day, and even two hundred miles if the condition of the
snow is favorable and the cold is 30 or 40 degrees below zero. The
colder the weather is the greater is the speed. Seventy or eighty miles
a day is a good average for a reindeer."

When this talk was ended, Pehr Wasara said to me, "Let us take our skees
and go to one of my herds near by." After a run of about two miles we
came into the midst of a herd of about three thousand reindeer. "There
are more," he said with pride. "Are they not fine animals?"

"Yes, indeed, they are," I replied.

While I was looking at the magnificent horns of some of the beasts, Pehr
remarked: "The horns of the males, which often weigh forty pounds,
attain the full size at the age of six or seven years, those of the cow
at about four years. The time the reindeer drops his horns is from March
until May. In the adult animals they attain their full size in September
or at the beginning of October. After the age of eight years the
branches gradually drop off. They are the easiest animals that man can
keep. They require no barns. They are never housed. They like cold
weather and snow. Food has not to be stored for them. They will not
touch the moss that has been gathered unless brought up to do so by
farmers. They get their food themselves. We do not give them water. When
thirsty they eat the snow. When our people go among them they will often
not even r