salt meat, for we have had nothing else to give them, and they are out of health; and there are hardly enough of them at best to carry our lightest load. If one of these tetanoids should attack them on the road, it may be game up for all

of us.

"Dec. 28.-I have fed the dogs the last two days on their dead brethren. Spite of all proverbs, dog will eat dog, if properly cooked. I have been saving up some who died of fits, intending to use their skins, and these have come in very opportunely. I boil them into a sort of bloody soup, and deal them out twice a day in chunks and solid jelly; for of course they are frozen like quartz rock. These salt meats are absolutely poisonous to the northern Esquimaux dog. We have now lost fifty odd, and one died yesterday in the very act of eating his reformed diet."

The poor famished creatures broke down on this adventure, and Kane and his companion Petersen were obliged to return to the ship with them.

"Jan. 13.—I am feeding up my few remaining dogs very carefully; but I have no meat for them except the carcasses of their late companions. These have to be boiled; for in their frozen state they act as caustics, and, to dogs famishing as ours have been, frozen-food often proves fatal, abrading the stomach, and oesophagus. One of these poor creatures had been a child's pet among the Esquimaux.

"Last night I found her in nearly a dying state at the mouth of our tossut,' wistfully eyeing the crevices of the door

1 The underground entrance to the hut of the Esquimaux is so called.

VOL. I.

R

as they emitted their forbidden treasures of light and heat. She could not move, but, completely subdued, licked my hand-the first time I ever had such a civilised greeting from an Esquimaux dog. I carried her in among the glories of the moderate paradise she aspired to, and cooked her a dead puppy soup. She is now slowly gaining strength, but can barely stand.

"I want all my scanty dog-force for another attempt to communicate with the bay settlements. Counting my greatest possible number of dogs, we have but five at all to be depended on, and these far from being in condition for the journey. Toodla, Jenny-at this moment officiating as wet nurse-and Rhina, are all the relics of my South Greenland teams; little Whitey is the solitary Newfoundlander; one big yellow and one feeble little black, all that are left of the powerful recruits we obtained from our Esquimaux brethren.

As

"It is a fearful thing to attempt a dog-trot of near one hundred miles, where your dogs may drop at any moment, and leave you without protection from 50° below zero. to riding I do not look to it; we must run alongside of the sledge, as we do on shorter journeys. Our dogs cannot move more than our scanty provisions, our sleeping bags, and guns.

"At home one would fear to encounter such hoopspined, spitting, snarling beasts, as the Esquimaux dogs of Peabody Bay. But, wolves as they are, they are far from dangerous: the slightest appearance of a missile or cudgel subdues them at once. Indispensable to the very life of their masters, they

1 Here was a proof of the effect of humane treatment on this social creature : this dog had been a child's pet, and consequently caressed by the child and its mother.

are treated, of course, with studied care and kindness; but they are taught from the earliest days of puppy-life a savoury fear that makes them altogether safe companions even for the children. But they are absolutely ravenous of everything below the human grade. Old Yellow, who goes about with arched back, gliding through the darkness more like a hyena than a dog, made a pounce the other day as I was feeding Jenny, and, almost before I could turn, had gobbled down one of her pups. As none of the litter will ever be of sledging use, I have taken the hint, and refreshed Old Yellow with a daily morning puppy. The two last of the family, who will then, I hope, be tolerably milk-fed, I shall reserve for my own eating." So much for Doctor Kane's opinion of “ Old Yellow." One would much like to know what "Old Yellow's" opinion of the Doctor might be under the circumstances recorded!

The next extract demonstrates, how indispensable the dog is to this race of people, and that in the direst necessity he is even devoured by those whom his services maintained.

"Hans reached Etah Bay and was hailed with joyous welcome. But a new phase of Esquimaux life had come upon its indolent, happy, blubber-fed denizens.

"Instead of plump, greasy children, and round-cheeked matrons, Hans saw around him lean figures of misery: the men looked hard and bony, and the children shrivelled in the hoods which cradled them at their mothers' backs. Famine had been among them; and the skin of a young

1 This statement is, in respect to the kindness said to be shown by the Esquimaux to their dogs, utterly inconsistent with Kane's previous one at p. 224.

sea-unicorn, lately caught, was all that remained to them of food. It was the old story of improvidence and its miserable train. They had even eaten their reserve of blubber, and were seated in darkness and cold, waiting gloomily for the sun. "Even their dogs, their main reliance for the hunt and for an escape to some more favoured camping-ground, had fallen a sacrifice to hunger. Only four had remained out of thirty the rest had been eaten."

"It seems that the poor wretches suffered terribly-the last resource pressed itself upon them. They killed their dogs. Fearful as it sounds, when we think how indispensable the services of these animals are to their daily existence, they cannot now number more than twenty in the entire ownership of the tribe. What can they hope for without them?"

Kane and his party (at least the remaining numbers of it), on their last journey, in endeavouring to regain the nearest Danish settlement, suffered greatly from famine. When much reduced they happily killed a large seal. "This," says he, "was our last experience of the disagreeable effects of hunger. In the words of George Stephenson, the charm was broken, and the dogs were safe.' The dogs I have said little about, for none of us liked to think of them. The poor creatures, Toodla and Whitey, had been taken with us as last resources against starvation. They were, as McGary worded it, meat on the hoof,' and able to carry their own fat over the floes.' Once, near Weary Man's Rest, I had been on the point of killing them; but they had been the leaders of our winter's team, and we could not bear the sacrifice."

WRA

CHAPTER XVIII

TRANGELL'S Expedition to the Polar Sea contains much information on the dogs of Northern Siberia and their relations with the human race in those vast countries. Countries on the limit of the animated world, in whose icy deserts and dreary regions, endless snows and icecovered rocks bound the horizon, and life lies shrouded in almost perpetual winter. Where existence has a continual conflict with privation in the grave of nature, a charnel-house, which contains the fossil bones of an earlier world.

"Of all the animals that live in these high north latitudes, none are so deserving of being noticed as the dog. The companion of man in all climates, from the islands of the South Sea where he feeds on bananas, to the Polar Sea where his food is fish, he here plays a part to which he is unaccustomed in more favoured regions. Necessity has taught the inhabitants of the northern countries to employ these comparatively weak animals in draught.

"On all the coasts of the Polar Sea, from the Obi to Behring's Straits, in Greenland, Kamtschatka, and in the Kurile Islands, the dogs are made to draw sledges loaded with persons and with goods, and for considerable journeys.

1 Wrangell's Expedition to the Polar Sca, 2nd edition. Edited by General Sabine, R.A., P.R.S.