A BEAR HUNT 95 



panion on this trip and I was to travel with his 

 sledge. Ilabrado was also a very old man. 



The morning was bitterly cold. The dogs left the 

 settlement with a rush, impatient to be away, as is 

 their habit always upon beginning a journey, but 

 heavy soft snow soon brought them down to a slow 

 and tedious gait. Two young dogs in Oxpuddy- 

 shou's team presently refused to pull, and the im- 

 patient and enraged Eskimo mercilessly beat them 

 to death with the handle of his whip, cut their harness, 

 and left the carcasses on the ice. For a time the 

 remaining twelve worked well, but at length one of 

 them also lagged, and much time was lost in frequent 

 halts, while Oxpuddyshou beat the dog until the un- 

 fortunate creature began to bleed at the nose, and 

 it, too, was cut loose and left for dead. 



Delays caused by frequent halts to beat the dogs 

 lost us much valuable time, resulting in the other 

 sledges leaving us far in the rear. However, the re- 

 maining dogs settled down to good steady hauling, 

 and on reaching smooth ice late in the day a speed of 

 from four to four and a half miles an hour was at- 

 tained ; and when we halted to camp by the side of a 

 large island of ice, twenty-three miles had been 

 covered. 



It was dark as pitch and the cold was intense, 

 bitter, penetrating. My sleeping-bag was too small 

 for comfort; my tent, crowded with three occupants, 

 was very cold. All this brought home to me the fact 

 that an unpleasant experience lay before me, com- 

 paratively unaccustomed as I still was to winter 



