280 LABRADOR 
dogs showed no signs of slacking when we drew up.” With 
a half-breed team of only seven dogs, I have myself travelled 
seventy miles a day over a hilly country, but there were only 
two hundred and fifty pounds on the komatik. On this 
journey there was time allowed for midday rest for lunch 
and the boiling of the kettle. 
The Eskimo dog never barks. But he howls exactly 
like a wolf, in sitting posture with the head upturned. 
One dog will start every dog in ear-shot. This keeps a 
traveller awake, and so the people have invented many 
charms, one of which consists in seizing the band of your 
shirt in your teeth and chewing it till the noise stops. 
During twenty years we have known of no cases of hy- 
datid cysts due to the dangerous form of tapeworm such 
as is transmitted by dogs in Greenland. Indeed, even dis- 
temper and mange are very rare among Eskimo dogs. 
Though every family keeps half a dozen at least, not a single 
case of hydrophobia has been known. 
The great beauty of a dog-team is that it seems to banish 
all conventionalities. You can go anywhere and every- 
where with no roads, no hedges, no walls, no restrictions 
but your own will; and that will, without rein or bridle, 
you make your dog’s will. Dogs can carry you up almost 
the steepest snow slope and down again in safety. They 
do not ship or sink in, and if they fall over even a high cliff 
in the winter, they are very rarely hurt. They seem to 
understand what you say, and so form a far better com- 
panion than a horse. They are automobiles which need no 
handling of their machinery. They enjoy travelling almost 
more than their masters enjoy it. They learn to love you 
as only a dog will, and if it were not for their occasional out- 
