A TEAM OF WORKING SLE 
DGE-DOGS 
MORE ARCTIC DOGS*—AND OTHERS. 
THE accompanying picture, lent us by Mr. 
Menten Cc. Brooke, of Wellime, 
Working whose collection of foreign 
pucilze Dogs. dogs has for years been the 
finest in the country, represents a team of 
working Sledge-Dogs, with the sledge, tent, 
and other paraphernalia actually used by 
their owner when prospecting in Alaska. 
The first dog in the team is an Hsquimaux 
of sorts; but it is alleged, and his appearance 
bears it out, that he has one-quarter wolf 
blood in his veins. The second and third 
are very fair specimens of the Hsquimaux 
dog, though not as high-class as the dog 
“Arctic King,” whose portrait we reproduced 
a couple of months back. The dog next 
to the sledge is an animal by no means 
noticeable for beauty or purity of blood, but 
regarded as a working dog he is, according 
to his owner, worth the rest of the team. 
He is a dog of some hundred pounds weight, 
heavy and powerful, with drop ears and 
docked tail, and is a specimen of the manu- 
factured variety known as the Hudson’s Bay 
Husky (a mixture originally of mastiff, boar- 
hound, wolf and Esquimaux), which is found 
to be more enduring and more tractable 
than the Esquimaux dog, whose wildness 
and ferocity in times of want, as well as 
his pugnacity and thieving propensities, are 
sometimes rather hardly felt. Both Hsqui- 
maux dogs and Huskies are used to draw 
the mail-sledges which now weekly leave 
Dawson City to carry the mails to the 
various parts of the Yukon District and 
even as far away as Cape Nome, a distance 
of nearly one thousand five hundred miles. 
This mail service 1s maintained by the 
Governments of both Canada and the United 
States. The average daily distance covered 
by these official teams is about forty miles; 
but of course, in the case of private teams 
such as that in our illustration, the distance 
depends upon the capacity of the dogs and 
the caprice and necessity of the owner. The 
photograph from which our illustration is 
taken was taken in England, and the back- 
eround is artificial, the sledge running on 
a specially-prepared track; but the dogs are 
genuine Alaskan workers, and the sledge the 
one which had been used in the Yukon 
territory. 
*See AnrmaL Lire, Vol. I., pp. 107 and 192. 
49 
