OF FOXES, MANY AND VARIOUS 267 



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? 



