ould I not wash?" I said, holding up my blackened hands.

"You must not let water touch you out in the open air, when it is so
very cold as it is to-day," was his answer.

I was very inexperienced then, and not willing to lose my wash, which I
so much needed, I did not heed the warning. Having a blazing fire
before me and a good dry towel, I ventured to take the wash, and for a
minute or two after felt much better. Soon, however, there were strange
prickling sensations on the tops of my hands, and then they began to
chap and bleed, and they became very sore, and did not get well for
weeks. The one experiment of washing in the open air with the
temperature in the fifties below zero was quite enough. In the
following years I left the soap at home and only carried the towel.
When very much in need of a wash, I had to be content with a dry rub
with the towel. Mrs Young used to say, when I returned from some of
these trips, that I looked like old mahogany. The bath was then
considered a much-needed luxury.

For our food, when travelling in such cold weather, we preferred the
fattest meat we could obtain. From personal experience I can endorse
the statements of Arctic explorers about the value of fat or oil and
blubber as articles of food, and the natural craving of the system for
them. Nothing else seemed to supply the same amount of internal heat.
As the result of experience, we carried the fattest kind of meat.

As soon as the snow was melted down in the larger of our kettles, meat
sufficient for our party was soon put on and boiled. While it was
cooking, we thawed out the frozen fish for our dogs. Such is the effect
of the frost that they were as hard as stone, and it would have been
cruel to have given them in that state to the noble animals that served
us so well. Our plan was to put down a small log in front of the fire,
so close to it that when the fish were placed against it, the intensity
of the heat would soon thaw them out. The hungry dogs were ever sharp
enough to know when their supper was being prepared; and as it was the
only meal of the day for them, they crowded around us and were impatient
at times, and had to be restrained.

Sometimes, in their eagerness and anxiety for their food--for it often
required a long time for the fire to thaw the fishes sufficiently for us
to bend them--the dogs in crowding one before the other would get into a
fight, and then there would be trouble. Two dogs of