338 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[MarcH 3, 1906. 

attempting to eat, and she recounted all that 
had happened during my absence. Then she 
questioned me: What had I been doing all this 
time? What had I seen? Was my good mother 
well? I had nothing to relate. I wanted to 
hear her talk, to watch her happiness, and in 
that I was happy too. In due time my trunks 
were brought over, and handing her the key of 
one, I said that it and its contents were all hers. 
What exclamations of surprise, of admiration 
there were as she unwrapped and unfolded the 
various things and spread them out here and 
there on table and couch and chairs. She 
threw the necklace on over her head, clasped 
on the bracelets, ran over and gave me a silent 
kiss, and then laid them away. “They are too 
nice, too good,” she said. “I am not hand- 
some enough to wear them.” 
Then she came back and whispered: “But 
all these are too many for me. May I give 
some of them to my grandmothers?’—meaning 
Mrs. Berry and the Crow woman. 
In the lot there were several quiet dress pat- 
terns, a couple of shawls, which I had intended 
for them, and I said that they would be ap- 
propriate gifts for women of advanced age. 
How happy she was as she picked them up and 
presented them to the faithful friends. I look 
back upon that morning as the pleasantest one 
of my life. 
After a while I strolled out and down to 
Keno Bill’s place. It was December, but there 
was no snow on the ground. The sun shone 
warm, a gentle chinook was blowing. I thought 
of the far-away New England village shrouded 
in three feet of snow, and shivered. 
I found the usual crowd in Keno’s place. 
Judge D., a brilliant lawyer and an ex-com- 
mander in the Fenian war, was playing the 
Marshal a game of seven up for the drinks. 
Some bull whackers and mule skinners were 
bucking faro. A couple of buckskin clad, kit- 
fox-capped, moccasined trappers were arguing 
on the best way to set a beaver trap in an ice- 
covered dam. They were all glad to see me, 
and I.was promptly escorted to the bar. 
Several asked, casually, what was new in the 
States? Not that they cared anything about 
them; they spoke of them as of some far-off 
and foreign country. 
“Hm!” said Judge D., “you didn’t . remain 
there long, did you, my boy?” 
“No,” I replied, “I didn’t; Montana is good 
enough for me.” 
“Montana!” cried the Judge, lifting his glass. 
“Here’s to her and her sun-kissed plains. 
Here’s to her noble mountains; her Indians and 
buffalo; and to those of us whom kind fortune 
has given a life within her bounds. Of all men, 
we are most favored of the Gods.” 
We all cheered the toast—and drank. 
It happened to be one of the frontier towns. 
One man begins in the morning to assuage a 
sudden acquired thirst, and one by one, and by 
twos, and threes, and fours, the rest join in, 
merchants, lawyers, doctors and all, until not a 
sober man is left, until all are hilarious, and 
half seas over. Judge D.—peace to his ashes— 
started it; by 4 o’clock in the afternoon things 
were pretty lively. I left the crowd and went 
home. The buffalo robe couch and a pipe, the 
open fire and Nat-ah’-ki’s cheerful presence, were 
more to my liking. 
At sundown, who should roll in but Berry and 
Sorrel Horse, with their women. How glad I 
was to see them all again. ‘You didn’t think 
that I would return?” I hazarded. 
They laughed. ‘“Didn’t I tell you that you 
would,” said Berry. “I only wonder that you 
didn’t come sooner.” 
We sat by the fire until late, the women 
chattering in another room. We went to bed. 
“Little woman,” I said, taking her hand, “pity 
your man; he is not so good as he might be; 
there are bad places in his heart * 
“Stop!” she exclaimed. “Stop! You are 
good, all good. I would not have you different 
from what you are. You have come back to me. 
I cannot tell how happy I am—I have not power 
to do so.” WALTER B. ANDERSON. 
[TO BE CONTINUED. | 
The Eskimo Dog. 
No story of the far north is complete without 
an account of the dogs which in winter there 
haul the sledges and make possible journeyings 
from place to place. They carry. food for. the 
traveler and for themselves and such other scant 
supplies as he may take with him. On a beaten 
track a good dog can haul about 150 pounds, 
and on short journeys a team of four dogs could 
haul about 400 pounds. On the crust or on a 
hard road the average rate of travel is often as 
much as four miles an hour, but if the snow was 
soft and deep it is very much less. 

In a country where dogs furnish the only. 
means of winter transportation they are valu- 
able, so that a good dog may be worth from 
$25 to $30, and in old times a good team of four 
dogs readily brought $100. The dogs are com- 
monly fed on frozen or dried fish, which is a 
part of their daily load, and each dog commonly 
received two fish—about seven pounds—at night 
after the day’s work was done. 
Perhaps no living man has had a greater ex- 
perience with the Eskimo dog (Canis familiaris 
borealis, Desmarest) than Mr. R. Macfarlane, 
whose notes on the species we give below: 
The Eskimos make use of this indispensable 
animal for traveling during the winter season, 
and in summer it renders much assistance in 
tracking their boats (umiaks) upstream, on the 
Mackenzie, Peel, Anderson, and other arctic 
rivers. These boats are manned by women, and 
are always steered by an elderly man. When 
tracking on the beach, the woman is attached 
to the cord hauling line next to the bow of the 
umiak, then follow at intervals, similarly 
harnessed thereto, from four to six dogs, who 
with their leader go forward or halt at the call 
of their driver mistress. Nearly all of the haul- 
ing dogs used by the company at Fort Anderson 
were obtained from the Eskimos. 
Early in the month of February, 1864, a very 
virulent and fatal form of distemper broke out 

ESKIMO DOG OF 
ALASKA, 
among the post and native dogs, and, in a short 
time, it carried off about three-fourths of their 
number; but as there was still much work to be 
done in the way of transport of outfit and re- 
turns between the Anderson and Fort Good 
Hope, besides the hauling of fresh venison from 
the camp of the fort hunter for the spring and 
summer use of the establishment, we had to be 
constantly on the lookout to purchase as many 
dogs as could be spared by visiting Indians and 
Eskimos, to replace 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 Ander- 
son, while the total native losses must have 
been very considerable. It was remarkable 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. Compar- 
atively few ever recovered. Most of the attacked 
animals became very quarrelsome and some 
quite ferocious, while a few fled and died quietly 
in the neighboring woods, or after traveling a 
distance of from 5 to 15 miles. Im course of a 
residence of over thirty years in the districts of 
Mackenzie River and Athabasca, I have known 
distemper to occur on different occasions at 
several trading posts in both, and always with 
fatal results 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 dis- 
temper in his winter quarters in latitude 82° north. 
He writes that the “first observed symptoms there- 
of in an animal was his falling to the ground in 
a fit, soon followed by a rushing about in a 
frantic manner as if wholly deprived of all sense 
of feeling. 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 sufferings 
would terminate in death. Several appeared to 
suffer so very much that they were shot to re- 
lieve the poor things from their pain.” Mark- 
ham also remarks “that nearly all arctic ex- 
peditions 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 diseased ani- 
mal has ever suffered permanent injury there- 
PGOtiea i 
Most of the true breed of Eskimo dog are 
more or less wolfish in appearance, while others 
facially resemble the common fox. Many of 
them are very playful and affectionate, but some 
others are bad tempered, sulky, and vicious 
in disposition. McClintock mentions one or 
two notable characteristics. ‘Chummie,” the 
favorite dog in Commander Hobson’s Eskimo 
team, while on the Fox in her celebrated pack- 
ice drift, disappeared and was supposed to be 
lost; but “after an absence of six days he re- 
turned decidedly hungry, although he could not 
have been without food all the time, and evinced 
great delight at getting back. He devoted his 
first attention to a hearty meal, then rubbed 
himself up against his own particular associates, 
after which he sought out and attacked the 
weakest of his enemies, and, soothed by their 
angry howlings, lay down and coiled himself up 
for a long sleep.” 
Like domestic and Indian dogs, the female of 
the species under review reproduces at various 
seasons, but as a rule most frequently during 
the warmer months of the year. The litter of 
pups seldom exceeds five in number, sometimes 
less and occasionally more, and there is no 
apparent difference in other relative dog char- 
acteristics. The full-grown female, however, is 
generally smaller in size than the male. 
Arctic explorers and other voyagers of ex- 
perience have written much and spoken highly 
of the capacity, the fortitude, and the endur- 
ance of the North American hauling dog. After 
half a century’s residence in northwestern Can- 
