44 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [Jan. 



on the deck of the Roosevelt. To walk for'ard it was 

 often necessary to push them aside with the knees. Not 

 a man was ever bitten. No man, woman, or child in the 

 far North has ever been attacked, and not more than 

 three or four in the whole tribe have ever been bitten. 



These dogs are supposed to be the direct descendants 

 of the northern gray or white wolf, which they greatly 

 resemble, with the exception of the tightly curled tail. 

 They are of various colors — black, white, brown, brindle, 

 and gray — and they weigh from sixty to one hundred 

 pounds. A team consists of from eight to twelve, each 

 attached to the sledge by a sixteen-foot rawhide trace. 

 The advantages of this arrangement are obvious. 

 Seated on the sledge with a twenty-five-foot whip, one 

 can reach out and touch the back of every dog, thereby 

 keeping him in his place and exerting him to keep his 

 trace tight. The disadvantages are the indirect pull of 

 the dogs at the tips of the fan and the inevitable braid- 

 ing of the traces into a rope as large as one's arm, the 

 untangling of which at low temperature necessitates 

 hours and hours of extreme discomfort. 



Eighty pounds to a dog is a good load for the average 

 sledging surface encountered on a long spring trip. The 

 strength of the driver is to be equally considered with 

 that of the dogs. Very often — a dozen times a day — 

 one is called upon to wrestle with his sledge to save it 

 from destruction. The load must be lifted bodily again 

 and again in endeavoring to extricate the sledge from 

 a troublesome crack in the ice or from the depths of a 

 deep hole; while the dogs are wagging their tails or 

 sitting on their haunches, much interested in the whole 

 proceeding. Given the smooth, hard surface of a fiord, 

 and my ten dogs could easily pull two thousand pounds. 



