Page 160 - Third Book of Reading Lessons

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4.· Harnessed to a sledge, the rein-deer will draw about three hundred pounds, though the Laplanders generally limit their burdens to two hundred and rty pounds. The trot of the rein-deer is about ten miles an hour, and their power of endurance is such, that journeys of one hundred and fty miles, in nine­ teen hours, are not uncommon. There is a portrait of a rein-deer, in one of the palaces of Sweden, which is said to have drawn, pon an occasion of emergen­ cy, an o cer, with.important despatches, the incred­ ible distance of eight hundred English miles, in
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rty-eight hours.· Pictet, a French astronomer, who visited the northern parts of Lapland in 1769,' r the purpose of observing the transit of Venus, started three rein-deer in light sledges r a short distance,
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READING LESSONS, 159
these a Laplander can do well, and live in tolerable com rt. Ile can make in summer a su cient qua ­ tity of cheese r the year's consumption; and during the winter season, can afford to kill deer enough to supply him and his family pretty constantly with venison. vVith two hundred deer, a man, if his m­ ily is small, can manage to get on. If he has but one hundred, his subsistence is very precarious, as he cannot rely entirely upon them r support. Should he have but fty, he is no longer independent, nor
able to keep a separate establishment.
3. As the winter approaches, the coat of the rein­ deer begins to thicken in the most remarkable man­ ner, and assumes that colour which is the great pecu­ liarity of polar quadrupeds. During the summer, this animal pastures upon green herbage, and browses upon the shrubs which he nds in his march; but in winter, his sole food is the lichen or moss, which he instinctively discovers under the snow.