90 BY ESKIMO DOG-SLED 



stretch comfortably if I lay across the middle. 

 But cold and cramped though our snow 

 houses might be, we ate our evening meal 

 with an appetite, for hunger is a splendid 

 sauce ; and we were glad to lie down and rest. 



The drivers used to make the beds by 

 spreading all the harness on the floor and 

 covering it with a bearskin. Then across the 

 middle of the house they laid my sleeping- 

 bag, and I crawled in. Last of all they made 

 a little hole in the top of the house for ventila- 

 tion and blocked up the door, and we were 

 ready for sleep. I was never very cold in a 

 snow house, in spite of the chilly surroundings, 

 for a threefold sleeping-bag like mine, seal- 

 skin, deerskin, and blanket, was as snug as 

 the warmest of beds. But, oh, the floor ! 

 Dogs' harness may be all very well as a bed ; 

 the Eskimos used to lie on it without any 

 extra covering, and snore the snores of the 

 weary ; but I used to roll from side to side, 

 vainly searching for a soft spot, and feeling, 

 I suppose, very much as the poor princess 

 must have done in the fairy story, when she 

 had to sleep with a pea under the mattress. 



On one of those wakeful nights I heard a 

 terrible scuffling among the dogs outside. 

 There were constant snarlings and howls, 

 mixed with a most weird trampling noise. 



