THE TAMING OF THE WILD 291 



the Poles. McClintock, Nansen, and Peary 

 all owed much to their sledge-dogs and readily 

 admit their indebtedness to these enduring 

 animals. Six of them, harnessed to a sledge, 

 will go seven miles an hour pulling six or 

 seven hundredweight, and an average perform- 

 ance of forty miles a day has been maintained 

 over a distance of two thousand miles. The 

 " huskies " of the Indians are extraordinary 

 workers, but are also vicious brutes and very 

 unfriendly towards strangers. Yet the children 

 cuff and kick them without fear, and the dogs 

 never turn on them. In summer-time, when 

 there is no work for them to do, the packs are 

 turned adrift and run wild, but at the begin- 

 ning of winter, driven probably by the increas- 

 ing difficulty of foraging for themselves, they 

 return to their old quarters and take up their 

 burden again. They do not seem to need 

 regular rations, and can pick fishbones clean 

 in a manner more suggestive of wolves than 

 tame dogs. Their worst disease is a form of 

 madness, which makes them useless for work, 

 but does not infect anyone they bite in the 

 same way as the rabies of southern breeds. 



Draught dogs are also used by the street 

 hawkers in the cities of Belgium, and to a 

 lesser extent in France. In Antwerp and 

 Ghent they are a familiar sight pulling milk 

 carts or vegetable barrows. They are not so 



