448 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



the deserted tents of the Eskhnos, "not taking an;s' thing of theirs 

 except one dogge." The possessions of these people are described, 

 including " also dogges like unto woolves, but for the most part black, 

 with other trifles, more to be wondred at for their strangenesse, 

 then for any other commoditie needefull for our use." Again, " they 

 frank or keepe certaine dogs not much unlike Wolves, which they yoke 

 togither, as we do oxen & horses, to a sled or traile: and so carry their 

 necessaries over the yce and snow from place to place: as the captive, 

 whom we ha^'e, made perfect signes. And when those dogs are 

 not apt for the same use: or when with hunger they are constrained 

 for lacke of other \'ictuals, they eate them : so that they are as need- 

 full for them in respect of their bignesse, as our oxen are for us." 

 At Leicester's Island, in the present Frobisher Bay, a captive Eskimo 

 caught one of the Englishmen's dogs and showed how the natives 

 trained their animals. In the narrator's words, " Taking in his hand one 

 of those countrey bridles, he caught one of our dogges and hampred 

 him handsomely therein, as we doe our horses, and with a whip in his 

 hanfl, he taught the dogge to drawe in a sled as we doe horses in a 

 coach, setting himselfe thereupon like a guide: so that we might see 

 they use dogges for that purpose that we do our horses .... They drawe 

 with dogges in sleads upon the yce, and remoo\'e their tents there- 

 withall wherein the\' dwell in Sonuner." This seems to l)e the earliest 

 account of P^sknno Dogs in Arctic America by Englishmen. It is 

 interesting to find that the explorers carried a dog with them from 

 Europe, showing the possibility at an earl\- date, of contamination 

 of the breed with European dogs. John Davis, who sailed from 

 England in June, 1585, " for the discoverie of the Northwest passage," 

 met with Eskimo Dogs in August, in Cumberland Sound. His 

 chronicler relates that here " we heard dogs houle on the shoare, 

 which we thought had bene volves, and therefore went on shoare to 

 kill them. When we came on land the dogges came presently to our 

 boat very gently, yet we thought they came to pray upon us, and 

 therefore we shot at them, and killed two: and about the necke of 

 one of them we found a leatherne coller, wjiereupon we thought them 

 to be tame dogs. There were twenty dogs like mastives with prickt 

 eares and long bush tailes" (Hakluyt's Voyages, Everyman's Library 

 ed., 5, p. 289). 



At the present day, it is unusual to see typical Eskimo Dogs .south 

 of Hamilton Inlet on the Labrador east coast, though many mongrel 

 indi\'iduals are found about the settlements between there and New- 

 foundland. Three centuries ago, however, the natives of the latter 



