nch--look at me. I've been wadin' up to the waist all the time!"

It need scarcely be said that their minds were much relieved when they
were made acquainted with the true state of matters, and that by means
of shoes that could be made by Hendrick, they would be enabled to
traverse with comparative ease the snow-clad wilderness--which else were
impassable.

But this work involved several days' delay in camp. Hendrick fashioned
the large though light wooden framework of the shoes--five feet long by
eighteen inches broad--and Oliver cut several deerskins into fine
threads, with which, and deer sinews, Paul and the captain, under
direction, filled in the net-work of the frames when ready.

"Can you go after deer on such things?" asked the captain one night
while they were all busy over this work.

"Ay, we can walk thirty or forty miles a day over deep snow with these
shoes," answered Hendrick.

"Where do the deer all come from?" asked Oliver, pausing in his work to
sharpen his knife on a stone.

"If you mean where did the reindeer come from at first, I cannot tell,"
said Hendrick. "Perhaps they came from the great unknown lands lying to
the westward. But those in this island have settled down here for life,
apparently like myself. I have hunted them in every part of the island,
and know their habits well. Their movements are as regular as the
seasons. The winter months they pass in the south, where the snow is
not so deep as to prevent their scraping it away and getting at the
lichens on which they feed. In spring--about March--they turn their
faces northward, for then the snow begins to be softened by the
increased power of the sun, so that they can get at the herbage beneath.
They migrate to the north-west of the island in innumerable herds of
from twenty to two hundred each--the animals following one another in
single file, and each herd being led by a noble stag. Thus they move in
thousands towards the hills of the west and nor'-west, where they arrive
in April. Here, on the plains and mountains, they browse on their
favourite mossy food and mountain herbage; and here they bring forth
their young in May or June. In October, when the frosty nights set in,
they again turn southward and march back to winter-quarters over the
same tracks, with which, as you have seen, the whole country is seamed.
Thus they proceed from year to year. They move over the land in
parallel lines, save where mountain passes obl