442 i ESQUIMAUX DOGS. 
fainter and fainter, for eight hours after we left the 
ice. 
Tlie training of these animals by the natives is of 
the most ungracious sort. I never heard a kind ac- 
cent from an Esquimaux to his dog. The driver's 
whip of walrus hide, some twenty feet long, a stone 
or a lump of ice skillfully directed, an imprecation 
loud and sharp, made emphatic by the fist or foot, and 
a grudged ration of seal's meat, make up the winter's 
entertainment of an Esquimaux team. In the sum- 
mer the dogs run at large and cater for themselves. 
I remarked that there were comparatively few of 
them at Holsteinherg, and was told a melancholy sto- 
ry to account for it. It seems that the governor, 
and priest, and fisherman keep goats, veritable goats, 
housed in a fire-warmed apartment in winter, and al- 
lowed the rest of the year to crop the grasses of the 
snow valleys. Now the half-tutored, unfed Esqui- 
maux dog would eat a goat, hones, skin, and, for aught 
I know, horns. The diet was too expensive. It he- 
came a grave question, therefore, how to reconcile the 
incompatibilities of dog and goat. The matter was 
settled very summarily. "When the green season of 
sunshine and plenty came, the dogs were sent to a 
rocky islet, a sort of St. Helena establishment, about 
a mile from the main, with permission to live by their 
wits ; and the goats remained to browse and grow fat 
at large. The results were tragical. The dogs were 
afilicted with sore famine. Great life battles began ; 
the strong keeping themselves alive by eating the 
weak. By this terrible process of gradual reduction, 
the colony was resolved into some four or five scarred 
veterans, whose nightly combats disturbed even the 
milk drinkers at the settlement, until the remnant at 
i 
