UNDER THE NORTH STAR 321 



powdery snow ; and up through that powdery snow darts the snaky 

 neck of stoat, the white weasel-hunter of birds. If there are the 

 deep plunges of the white hare, lynx and fox and mink and marten 

 and pekan will be plentiful ; for the poor white hare feeds all the 

 creatures of the northern wastes, man and beast. If there are 

 little dainty tracks — oh, such dainty tracks that none but a high- 

 stepping, clear-cut, clean-limbed, little thoroughbred could make 

 them ! — tracks of four toes and a thumb claw much shorter than 

 the rest, with a padding of five basal foot-bones behind the toes, 

 tracks that show a fluff on the snow as of furred foot-soles, tracks 

 that go in clean, neat, clear long leaps and bounds — the hunter 

 knows that he has found the signs of the northern fox. 



Here, then, he will camp for the winter. Camping in the Far 

 North means something different from the hastily pitched tent of 

 the prairie. The north wind blows biting, keen, unbroken in its 

 sweep. The hunter must camp where that wind will not carry 

 scent of his tent to the animal world. For his own sake, he must 

 camp under shelter from that wind, behind a cairn of stones, below 

 a cliff, in a ravine. Poles have been brought from the land of trees 

 on the dog sleigh. These are put up, criss-crossed at top, and over 

 them is laid, not the canvas tent, but a tent of skins, caribou, wolf, 

 moose, at a sharp enough angle to let the snow slide off. Then 

 snow is banked deep, completely round the tent. For fire, the 

 Eskimo depends on whale-oil and animal grease. The white man or 

 half-breed from the South hoards up chips and sticks. But mainly 

 he depends on exercise and animal food for warmth. At night he 

 sleeps in a fur bag. In the morning that bag is frozen stiff as boards 

 by the moisture of his own breath. Need one ask why the rarest furs, 

 which can only be produced by the coldest of climates, are so costly ? 



Having found the tracks of the fox, the hunter sets out his traps 

 baited with fish or rabbit or a bird-head. If the snow be powdery 

 enough, and the trapper keen in wild lore, he may even know what 

 sort of fox to expect. In the depths of midwinter, the white 

 Arctic fox has a wool fur to his feet like a brahma chicken. This 



