AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 
99 
the animal is soon within the reach of the unerring arrow 
of the hunter. They will discover a seal-hole entirely by 
the smell, at a very great distance. Their desire to attack 
the ferocious bear is so great, that the word nennook, 
which signifies that animal, is often used to encourage 
them, when running in a sledge: two or three Dogs, led 
forward by a man, will fasten upon the largest bear with- 
out hesitation. They are eager to chase every animal but 
the wolf; and of him they appear to have an instinctive 
terror, which manifests itself, on his approach, in a loud 
and long-continued howl. Certainly there is no animal 
which combines so many properties useful to his master 
as the Dog of the Esquimaux. 
With the exception of that most serviceable property of 
drawing and carrying burthens, most of the various races 
of Dogs have, in a similar manner, assisted mankind in 
subduing many wild beasts of the earth. This result, 
without which civilization must have very slowly ad- 
vanced, could not have been effected without the assist- 
ance of the Dog. Cuvier, the great French naturalist, 
says, “the Dog is the most complete, the most remark- 
able, and the most useful conquest ever made by man. 
Every species has become our property; each individual is 
altogether devoted to his master, assumes his manners, 
knows and defends his goods, and remains attached to him 
until death, and all this proceeds neither from want nor 
constraint, but solely from true gratitude and real friend- 
ship. The swiftness, the strength, and the scent of the 
Dog, have created for man a powerful ally against other 
animals, and were perhaps necessary to the establishment 
of society. He is the only animal which has followed man 
through every region of the earth.” Buffon says, “the 
art of training Dogs seems to have been the first invented 
by man; and the result of it was the conquest and peace- 
able possession of the earth.” But this art would never 
have become perfectly successful and completely univer- 
sal, had there not been in the race of Dogs a natural desire 
to be useful to man; an aptitude for his society; a strong 
and spontaneous longing for his friendship. Burchell, a 
distinguished traveller in Africa, has observed, that we 
never see in various countries an equal familiarity with 
Other quadrupeds, according to the habits, the taste, or the 
caprices of different nations; and he thence concludes, that 
the universal friendship of the man and the Dog, must be 
the result of the laws of nature. With singular propriety, 
therefore, has the name Canis familiaris been assigned 
by Linnseus to the species. 
The Dogs of the Esquimaux lead always a fatiguing, 
and often a very painful life. They are not, like the Sibe- 
rian Dogs, (to which they bear a considerable resem- 
blance,) turned out in the summer to seek their own sus- 
tenance: at that period they are fat and vigorous; for they 
have abundance of kciow, or the skin and part of the blub- 
ber of the walrus. But their feeding in winter is very 
precarious. Their masters have but little to spare; and 
the Dogs become miserably thin, at a time when the se- 
verest labour is imposed upon them. It is not, therefore, 
surprising that the shouts and blows of their drivers have no 
effect in preventing them from rushing out of their road, 
to pickup whatever they can descry; or that they are con- 
stantly creeping into the huts, to pilfer any thing within 
their reach: their chances of success are but small; for the 
people within the huts are equally keen in the protection 
of their stores, and they spend half their time in shouting 
out the names of the intruders (for the Dogs have all 
names,) and in driving them forth by the most unmerciful 
blows. This is a singular, but, from the difference, of 
circumstances, not unnatural contrast to the treatment of 
Dogs described in Homer. The princes of the Trojan 
war allowed their Dogs to wait under their tables, to 
gather up the remains of their feasts. In the twenty-third 
book of the Iliad, it is mentioned that Patroclus had no 
fewer than nine such humble retainers. The same princes, 
too, we learn in the tenth book of the Odyssey, carried 
home to their Dogs the fragments which fell from the ta- 
bles of their entertainers. Amongst these fragments were 
the soft and fine parts of bread, called apomagdalia, with 
which the guests wiped their fingers when the meal was 
finished, and which were always a perquisite to the Dogs. 
In allusion, probably, to this custom, the woman of Ca- 
naan says, “ the Dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from 
their master’s table.” 
The hunger which the Esquimaux Dogs feel so severely 
in winter, is somewhat increased by the temperature they 
live in. In cold climates, and in temperate ones in cold 
weather, animal food is required in larger quantities than 
in warm weather, and in temperate regions. The only 
mode which the Dogs have of assuaging or deceiving the 
calls of hunger, is by the distention of the stomach with 
any filth which they can find to swallow. The wolves 
and rein-deer of the polar countries, when pressed by hun- 
ger in the winter, devour clay. The Kamschatkans 
sometimes distend their stomachs with saw-dust. Hum- 
boldt relates that the Otomacs, during the periodical inun- 
dations of the rivers of South America, when the depth of 
the water prevents their customary occupation of fishing, 
appease their hunger, even for several months, by swallow- 
ing a fine unctuous clay, slightly baked. Many other in- 
stances of this nature are given in Dr. Elliotson’s learned 
and amusing Notes to his edition of Blumenbach’s Physi- 
ology. The painful sense of hunger is generally regarded 
as the effect of the contraction of the stomach, which ef- 
