342 ALL ABOUT DOGS 



and throwing it on the snow, when the dogs, mistaking 

 it for meat, hasten forward to pick it up. The women 

 also entice them from the huts in a similar manner. The 

 rate at which they travel depends of course on the 

 weight they have to draw and the roads on which the 

 journey is performed. 



" When the latter is level and very hard and 

 smooth constituting in other parts of North Amer- 

 ica what is called ' good sleighing,' six or seven 

 dogs will draw from eight to ten hundredweight 

 at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour, for several 

 hours together, and will easily, under these circum- 

 stances, perform a journey of from fifty to sixty miles 

 a day. On untrodden snow, five and twenty, or thirty 

 miles would be a good journey in a day. 



" The same number of well-fed dogs with five or six 

 hundredweight behind them, that of the sledge in- 

 cluded, are almost unmanageable, and will, on a 

 smooth road, run any way they please at the rate of 

 ten miles an hour. The work performed, however, by 

 a greater number of dogs is, by no means, in propor- 

 tion to this, owing to the imperfect mode already de- 

 scribed of utilising the strength of these sturdy crea- 

 tures and to the more frequent snarling and fighting 

 occasioned by the increase in numbers of the draught 

 team or teams." 



I have no doubt all owners of kennels have no- 

 ticed the sudden antipathies taken by dogs some- 

 times to their own comrades and companions. I 

 remember several instances, amongst my dogs; one 

 was between two remarkably quiet and unassum- 



