LOST IN THE MACKENZIE DELTA 109 



Regulation of temperature is obtained by adjusting 

 your belt. Both the shirt and outer coat are made so 

 that they hang loosely outside of the trousers and come 

 down halfway to the knee. If the day is, say, around 

 zero or 20 below, you would very likely wear nothing 

 but your shirt (or, as we frequently call it, undercoat) 

 hanging loose like a cloak. If that proves chilly, you put 

 on a belt which keeps the warmth in a bit more. If you 

 begin to perspire, you take off your belt again. If it is 

 still too warm, you open up the neck of the shirt a little 

 under the chin and allow a cold current of air to circulate 

 up around your body and come out at your neck. When 

 you are overheated this feels very pleasant, and if it be- 

 gins to feel unpleasantly cool you tighten up the neck 

 of your undercoat again. 



If the undercoat with a belt is not warm enough, you 

 put on over it the outer coat, which you have been carry- 

 ing on top of the sled. The two coats with the belt on 

 the undercoat may now be too warm so you remove the 

 belt. If it is extremely cold, you take the belt off the 

 inner and put it outside the outer coat so as to hold both 

 of them against you. 



With the trousers the same general principles apply 

 except that I have found it even better than two pairs of 

 fur trousers to have the inner trousers of fur and over 

 them several pairs of light outer trousers made Chinese- 

 fashion of some thin cloth, such as drilling. You would 

 carry three or four pairs of them on top of the sled. If 

 the single under trousers are not enough, you put on 

 one pair of loose drill trousers over them. If that is not 

 enough, you put on a second pair, and if that is not 

 enough still a third, and so on till you have enough. 

 When it gets warmer you take them off one by one and 



