290 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 



northern winter. Like the camel, also, it can 

 make a sufficient meal of Nature's leavings, 

 and any old patch of moss or lichen not too 

 deep under the snow to be dug out with its 

 hoofs is uncovered and eaten. 



Two reindeer, harnessed in a sledge, can 

 pull six or seven hundredweight over hard 

 snow. Such is their work in winter. In the 

 summer-time they are either ridden or used as 

 pack animals, each of them carrying at least 

 a hundredweight and a half. Thousands of 

 Siberian reindeer have been imported by the 

 American Government into the wilds of Alaska, 

 and their timely introduction has probably 

 been the means of saving the Eskimos from 

 the extinction to which they seemed doomed 

 when whaling expeditions had scoured their 

 coasts and exhausted their supply of natural food. 



To the frozen north likewise belong the 

 sledge-dogs, particularly valuable in those 

 regions because, being meat-eaters, they can 

 be fed on the blubber and waste of whale or 

 walrus, or on fish, whereby the forage problem 

 is solved without the trouble of transport. 

 Both the large Eskimo dog, which is very 

 close kinsman to the wolf, and the smaller and 

 handsomer Samoyede have been tamed in this 

 way, and their domestication must be of ancient 

 date, for old bone carvings show them drawing 

 sledges. Arctic explorers have used them at 



