184 THROUGH THE MACKENZIE BASm 



our heavy weekly losses. The distemper did not much abate 

 until May, when it ceased almost as suddenly as it had 

 appeared; but during the three and one-half months of its 

 prevalence, the Company lost no less than sixty-five sleigh 

 dogs at Fort Anderson, while the total native losses must 

 have been very considerable. It was remarked at the time 

 that bloodless fights between healthy and affected animals 

 resulted in no injury to the former, but when the fight was 

 hard and bloody the disease was thereby communicated and 

 the bitten dog soon fell a victim to it. Comparatively few 

 ever recovered. Most of the attacked animals became very 

 quarrelsome, and some quite ferocious, while a few fled and 

 died quiietly in the neighbouTing woods, or after travelling, 

 a distance of from 5 to 16 miles. In course of a residence 

 of over thirty years in the districts of Mackenzie River and 

 Athabaska, I have known distemper to occur on different 

 occasions at several trading-posts in both, and always with 

 fatal resiilts to the dogs, but this Anderson epidemic was, 

 I think, one of the very worst ever experienced in the far 

 north. I find that Sir George Nares, ^when on his polar 

 expedition of 1875-76, long after the foregoing was written, 

 lost quite a number of his Eskimo dogs by distemper in his 

 winter quarters in latitude 82° north. He writes that the 

 " first observed symtoms thereof in an animal was his fall- 

 ing to the ground in a fit, soon followed by a rushing about 

 in a frantic manner as if wholly deprived of all sense of feel- 

 ing. On some occasions one would rush into the water and 

 get drowned. At other times a few would wander away 

 from the ship and be seen no more. Sometimes their suffer- 

 ings would terminate in death. Several appeared to suffer 

 so very much that they were shot to relieve the poor things 

 from their pain." Markham lalso remarks " that nearly all 

 Arctic expeditions have experienced the same kind of dis- 

 ease and mortality among their dogs, and for which there 

 has hitherto been no remedy. Hydrophobia is unknown 

 among the Eskimo or Indian dogs, as no one bitten by a 



