22 My Dogs in the Northland 



the annoyance they occasioned, they only 

 laughed and replied, " Oh, you will get used # 

 to it and then never notice it." And so it 

 was, impossible though it seemed. In a few 

 weeks we peacefully slept while, like fiends 

 just outside our window, these brutes were 

 howling their loudest, as if in rivalry to the 

 scores of other packs all around them. 



I fancy I might have had more love for 

 those Eskimo animals if by training, coax- 

 ing, petting, feeding or punishing, I could 

 have succeeded in conquering their thievish 

 habits. But it was an utter impossibility. 

 Steal they always would and did. Any- 

 thing eatable, and many things considered 

 uneatable, they could not pass by. I have 

 known them to leave their supper of white- 

 fish to go and tear smoked moose-skin moc- 

 casins down from a clothes-line and greedily 

 devour them. An old leather shirt was con- 

 sidered a dainty morsel, and at times there 

 seemed to be more than even poetic justice 

 in the fact that, if they could find the whip 

 of a cruel driver, they speedily devoured the 

 lash, even if it were ten feet long and only 

 made of braided buckskin and loaded with 

 shot! 



Sometimes when on a journey, and a halt 



