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THE ESQUIMAUX DOG. 525 
comfort appear to trouble them much. I remember seeing 
at St. Michael’s, during one of the coldest days of December, 
one of the Fort dogs comfortably asleep on the steps leading 
to the door of a store-house, with his hinder quarters at the 
top, and his head near the bottom, his whole body some 
twenty or thirty degrees out of the horizontal. Another 
advantage of their heavy outer covering, and not an incon- 
siderable one, is that it enables them the better to undergo 
the disciplinary ordeal of the whip, enough in some in- 
tances, it -would seem, to make raw hide thongs of an 
ordinary dog skin. K 
The Esquimaux dog does not bark, and this, together with 
the short quick snap of his bite, is the most wolfish trait 
Which he retains from his supposed ancestry. There. is, 
however, no lack of voice, or the exercise of it; he howls 
most dismally whenever the spirit moves him. Those who 
ve had experiences of wolves and coyotes on the plains, 
can form but a faint idea of what it is to have two or three 
dozen Esquimaux dogs howling in concert within a few feet 
of one’s head. The noise will go through two or three log 
partitions, and then be altogether trying to human nerves. 
There are times, nevertheless, when it is rather comical than 
otherwise; as, for instance, when they exert themselves in 
this direction in starting on a journey. As soon as the sled 
is brought out, and while the load is being adjusted upon it, 
the dogs gather around, and, fairly dancing with excitement, 
raise their voices in about a dozen unmelodious strains. 
There are often one or two who have to be dragged up to 
their duty by a whip-lash around their necks, and they add 
their peculiarly lugubrious, half strangled notes to the 
general discord. This kind of row is renewed every time 
they start, until travel and hard work have taken the spirit 
out of them, when they go to their work in a dogged, busi- 
hess-like manner without any particular uproar. 
From five to seven dogs are generally used together in a 
team, though the poorer natives often make shift to get along 
