[ 



SLEDGE DOGS OF THE NORTH. 179 



dogs, necessities. Yet, for all that, they are 

 never stabled, curried, washed, blanketed, shod, 

 seldom protected or even fed. When the icy 

 cold wintry blasts sweep the drifting snows over 

 plain and valley and buries under his white 

 mantle his food he either digs for it, finds and 

 eats what he can, or starves. 



In my plains experience with the Indians 

 or in the Polar Regions with the natives of the 

 north or Esquimaux, I have obserA^ed that the 

 love of an Indian for his ponies, an Esquimaux 

 for his dogs or Laplander for his reindeer con- 

 sists in seeing how much he really can get out 

 of them with the least trouble or effort to him. 



I have seen the Indians or natives of the 

 northwest and the Esquimaux of Hudson's and 

 Baffin's Bay, Greenland, etc., drive half starved 

 dogs to the sledge until they fell or froze, only to 

 be eaten by their masters or mates, whom for a 

 lifetime they had pulled with or served faith- 

 fully. Necessity recognizes no law — man is but 

 an animal himself — and in the struggle for life 

 or gain it is everywhere but the ''Survival of the 

 Fittest'' or strongest and passing of the weak, 

 be it white man or Indian. 



The best of the ^Sledge Dogs of the North" 

 are to be found in Greenland or Siberia, "Sam- 

 oyed" dogs or its Esquimaux cousin, the "Immit 

 Dog", used by explorers and Esquimaux gener- 



