The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-10-16
HERDS OF WILD REINDEER.
Found in a Northwestern Country
Where Sixty Degrees Below is Oom-

Where Sixty Degrees Below is Oom-
mon.
From the Chicago Herald.
A remarkable story is told by Rev e.
c. Wallis, missionary of the Episcopal
church, who arrived in San Francisco re-
Gently from the Porcupine river, In the
British possessions, Just over the line of
Alaska, on the edge Of t he Rocky noun
tains. 1t is mainly about the intense
cold, the immense herds of reindeer and
the sublime magnificence of the aurora
boreahs. DR.. Wallis has been seven
years in the wilds of the Porcupine river,
and for the past eighteen months his wife
has been with him assisting in teaching
the Indians 1t does not appear to be
generally known that there are vast
herds of reindeer in that part of the
country. DIR. Sheldon jackson, superin-
tendent of education for Alaska, and
Captain Healy, of the Bear, have for
compile OF years been importing reindeer
from Siberia, and this is the reason for
the supposed scarcity throughout that
region, but the scarcity appears TO be
, toward the southern, southwestern and
northern coasts In the far interior
there are myriads of them.
"They are remarkably numerous every
where about my mission near the mouth
of the Porcupine river" said the
reverend gentleman Back toward the
mountains from my house | have seen
great bands of them, and almost every
where / looked / could see them. This
summer when the ice broke up on the
river l remember seeing six or seven Of
them on a cake o. ice floating down, and
| saw many others floating on the ice.
For much of the time have lived at the
mission | have subsisted almost exclu-
sively on reindeer meat. 1t is very good,
and may say IL is about the only kind Of
don u triad of I fbinir II 10
better, all things considered, than beef,
and that you can eat it longer without its
palling on you. II is a venison more than
anything else. The Indians eat it
almost exclusively, and they are big
and strong. Some of them are six feet in
hight, and the average is about five feet
ten inches. They are genuine North
American Indians. and not the Aleuts,
Eskimos, or mixture of the two. ! keep
an Indian hunter and he supplies me with
all the reindeer meat ] want. He also
brings in grouse, ducks, bear and other
game as | need it. have learned TO shoot
pretty well myself, as white men do in
that region, or anywhere contiguous to it.
The ducks and grouse, like the reindeer,
are remarkably good eating. 1t is fear
fully cold there. Last winter the Their
mometer was for week at time down
to 61o, and have seen 1t go even consid-
erably lower. At no time in the winter,
nor during other winters that have been
there, was 1t higher than 400 This cold
is excrucating. We lived in a solid log
house, a good warm one, but many a
time l have Weakened in the night
and found the blankets, which were kept
well up under the nose, frozen into cake
of ice. Sometimes the intense cold cakes
the blankets for long distance down.
Meats and everything froze, and you
would throw them anywhere without
thinking. The worst experience was try
ing to make bread. The yeast would
freeze in spite of you, oftentimes even
when the greatest care was exercised. II
you stepped out everything was so still
and so intensely cold you could hear your
self breathe. 1t had q rustling sound.
discovered a queer thing about the cold,
and it was this: Below 40 degrees you
didn't notice it any more than 40, IL
might go TO 60, or even more, but it made
so little difference that you didn't notice
it, 1t was all practically the same to
yOu.n