470 



THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



of dog shoes of the appearance shown in the accompanying- 

 woodcut. They are used only in case of need. 



The Chukch dogs are of the same breed, but smaller, than 

 the Eskimo dogs in Danish Greenland. They resemble wolves, 

 are long-legged, long-haired, and shaggy. The ears are short, 

 commonly upright ; their colour very variable, from black or 

 white, and black or white spotted, to grey or yellowish-brown. 

 For iimumerable generations they have been used as draught 

 animals, while as watch dogs they have not been required in a 

 country where theft or robbery ajipears never to take place. 

 The power of barking they have therefore comj^letely lost, or 

 perhaps they never possessed it. Even a European may come 

 into the outer tent without any of the dogs there informing 

 their owners sleeping in the inner tent by a sound of the 

 foreigner's arrival. 



On the other hand, they are good though slow draught 

 animals, being capable of long-continued exer- 

 tion. They are as dirty and as peaceable 

 as their owners. There are no fights made 

 between dog-teams belonging to different 

 tents, and they are rare between the dogs of 

 an encampment and those of strangers. In 

 Europe dogs are the friends of their masters 

 and the enemies of each other; here they 

 are the friends of each other and the slaves 

 of their masters. In winter they appear 

 in case of necessity to get along with very 

 little food ; they are then exceedingly lean, 

 and for the most part lie motionless in some 

 snow-drift. They seldom leave the neighbour- 

 hood of the tent alone, not even to search for 

 food or hunt at their own hand and for their own account. 

 This ap25ears to me so much the more remarkable, as they 

 are often several days, I am inclined to say weeks, in suc- 

 cession without getting any food from their masters. A 

 piece of a whale, with the skin and part of the flesh 

 adhering, washed out of frozen sandy strata thus lay un- 

 touched some thousand paces from Pitlekaj ; and the neigh- 

 bourhood of the tents, where the hungry dogs were constantly 

 wandering about, formed, as has been already stated, a favourite 

 haunt for ptarmigan and hares during winter. Young dogs 

 some months old are already harnessed along with the team in 

 order that they may in time become accustomed to the draught 

 tackle. During the cold season the dogs are permitted to live 

 in the outer tent, the females with their young even in the 

 inner. We had two Scotch collies with us on the Vega. They 

 at first frightened the natives very much with their bark. 



One-third of the 

 natm'al size. 



