186 cook's voyage to may, 



tentive to his voice, he chastizes them by throwing 

 it at them. Upon these occasions, their dexterity in 

 picking it up again is very remarkable, and forms the 

 principal difficulty of their art. But it is indeed not 

 surprising, that they should labour to be skilful in a 

 practice upon which their safety so materially depends. 

 For they say, that if the driver should happen to lose 

 his stick, the dogs will instantly perceive it ; and un- 

 less their leader be of the most sober and resolute 

 kind, they will immediately run a head full speed, 

 and never stop till they are quite spent. But as that 

 will not be the case soon, it generally happens that 

 either the carriage is overturned, and dashed to pieces 

 against the trees; or they hurry down some precipice* 

 and all are buried in the snow. The accounts that 

 were given us of the speed of these dogs, and of 

 their extraordinary patience of hunger and fatigue, 

 were scarcely credible, if they had not been sup<- 

 ported by the best authority. We were indeed our- 

 selves witnesses of the great expedition with which 

 the messenger who had been dispatched to Bolcheretsk 

 with the news of our arrival, returned to the harbour 

 of St. Peter and St. Paul, though the snow was at this 

 time exceedingly soft. But 1 was informed by the 

 commander of Kamtschatka, that this journey was 

 generally performed in two days and a half; and that 

 he had once received an express from the latter place 

 in twenty-three hours. 



The dogs are fed during the winter on the offals 

 of dried and stinking fish ; but are always deprived 

 of this miserable food a day before they set out on a 

 journey, and never suffered to eat before they reach 

 the end of it. We were also told, that it was not 

 unusual for them to continue thus fasting two entire 

 days, in which time they would perform a journey of 

 one hundred and twenty miles. * These dogs are in 



* Extraordinary as this may appear, KraschininikofF, whose 

 account of Kamtschatka, from every tiling that I saw, and had an 

 opportunity of comparing it with, seems to me to deserve entire 



