40 The Mtisk-ox 



into socks. You wear three pairs inside your 

 moccasins, and at night, if you have been well 

 advised, you put next to your feet a slipper mocca- 

 sin of the unborn musk-ox, hair inside. It must 

 be remembered that in the Barren Grounds you 

 have no fire to thaw out or dry frozen and wet 

 clothing. The tiny fire you do have is only 

 enough to make tea. Therefore abundant duffel 

 and moccasins are necessary, first, to have a dry, 

 fresh change, and second, to replenish them as 

 they wear out, as they do more than elsewhere, 

 because of the rocky going. As for tea and to- 

 bacco, no human being could stand the cold 

 and the hardship of a winter Barren Ground trip 

 without putting something hot into his stomach 

 every day, while the tobacco is at once a stimu- 

 lant and a solace. The space left on the sledge 

 after the tea and tobacco and moccasins and 

 duffel have been stowed must be filled with the 

 sticks that you cut into pieces (just the width of 

 the sledge) at the last wood on the edge of the 

 Barren Grounds proper. The sledge is a toboggan 

 about nine feet in lens^th and a foot and a half in 

 width, made of two or three birch slats held to- 

 gether by crosspieces lashed on to them with 

 caribou thongs, turned over and back at the front 



