CHAPTER VII 



SLED-DOGS OF THE NORTH TRAILS 



WITHOUT sled- dogs there could be no winter 

 travel over the great territories of the Far Cana- 

 dian North, and consequently little or no fur 

 trade. Possibly you have never had occasion 

 to think of such a modern thing as commerce 

 in connection with those great snow-bound wilder- 

 nesses that lie beyond the white man's country : 

 possibly it never occurred to you that the winter 

 life of Indian and Eskimo could concern you in 

 any way at all. Yet, since to them do we owe 

 thanks for great stores of fur pelts, they touch 

 on our lives in an indirect way even as far " back 

 home " as London, Paris, New York, and in all 

 cities ; though few people who buy rich furs 

 over city shop counters picture the drear sur- 

 roundings in which fur-bearing animals are 

 captured interminable wastes of snow ; intense 

 cold, even blizzard ; and lone men with patient 

 wolf-dogs battling against bitter, merciless Arctic 

 winter. Perhaps only Vikings of the ancient 

 Hudson Bay Company, and others of the like 

 who have traded in fur for half a century, really 

 know how much is yearly harvested by the aid 

 of the sled- dog. Just as civilisation cannot 

 to-day do without railways, so the Far North 



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