OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 



travel depends, of course, on the weight they have to draw and the road on 

 which their journey is performed. When the latter is level and very hard 

 and smooth, constituting what in other parts of North America is called 

 " good sleighing," six or seven dogs will draw from eight to ten hundred 

 weight, at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour for several hours to- 

 gether, and will easily under those circumstances perform a journey of fifty 

 or sixty miles a day ; on untrodden snow, five-and-twenty or thirty miles 

 would be a good day's journey. The same number of well-fed dogs, with a 

 weight of only five or six hundred pounds (that of the sledge included) are 

 almost unmanageable, and will on a smooth road run any way they please 

 at the rate often miles an hour. The work performed by a greater number of 

 dogs is, however, by no means in proportion to this ; owing to the imperfect 

 mode already described of employing the strength of these sturdy creatures, 

 and to the more frequent snarling and fighting occasioned by an increase of 

 numbers. 



In the summer, when the absence of snow precludes the use of sledges, 

 the dogs are still made useful on journeys and hunting excursions, by 

 being employed to carry burdens in a kind of saddle-bags laid across their 

 shoulders. A stout dog thus accoutred will accompany his master, laden 

 with a weight of about twenty to twenty-five pounds. When leading the 

 dogs, the Esquimaux take a half hitch with the trace round their necks 

 to prevent their pulling, and the same plan is followed when a sledge is 

 left without a keeper. They are also in the habit of tethering them, when 

 from home, by tying up one of the four legs ; but a still more effectual 

 method is similar to that which we saw employed by the Greenlanders of 

 Prince Regent's Bay, and consists in digging with their spears two holes 

 in the ice in an oblique direction and meeting each other, so as to leave an 

 eye-bolt to which the dogs are fastened. 



The scent of the Esquimaux dogs is excellent ; and this property is turned 

 to account by their masters in finding the seal holes, which these invaluable 

 animals will discover entirely by the smell at a very great distance. The 

 track of a single deer upon the snow will in like manner set them off at a full 

 gallop, when travelling, at least a quarter of a mile before they arrive at it, 

 when they are with difficulty made to turn in any other direction ; and the 

 Esquimaux are accustomed to set them after those animals to hunt them down 

 when already wounded with an arrow. In killing bears the dogs act a very 

 essential part, and two or three of them when led on by a man will eagerly 



