secured by lashings of thong, giving it a degree of strength
combined with flexibility which perhaps no other mode of fastening could
effect.

The colour of the dogs varies from a white, through brindled, to black
and white, or almost entirely black. Their hair in the winter is from
three to four inches long; but, besides this, nature furnishes them,
during this rigorous season, with a thick under coating of close, soft
wool, which they begin to cast in the spring. While thus provided, they
are able to withstand the most inclement weather without suffering from
the cold; and, at whatever temperature the atmosphere may be, they
require nothing but a shelter from the wind to make them comfortable,
and even this they do not always obtain. They are also wonderfully
enabled to endure the cold even on those parts of the body which are not
thus protected; for we have seen a young puppy sleeping, with its bare
paw laid on an ice-anchor, with the thermometer at -30 deg., which, with
one of our dogs, would have produced immediate and intense pain, if not
subsequent mortification. They never bark, but have a long, melancholy
howl like that of the wolf, and this they will sometimes perform in
concert for a minute or two together. They are, besides, always snarling
and fighting among one another, by which several of them are generally
lame. When much caressed and well fed, they become quite familiar and
domestic: but this mode of treatment does not improve their qualities as
animals of draught. Being desirous of ascertaining whether these dogs
are wolves in a state of domestication, a question which we understood
to have been the subject of some speculation, Mr. Skeoch, at my request,
made a skeleton of each, when the number of all the vertebrae was found
to be the same in both,[010] and to correspond with the well-known
anatomy of the wolf.

When drawing a sledge, the dogs have a simple harness (_annoo_) of deer
or seal skin going round the neck by one bight, and another for each of
the fore legs, with a single thong leading over the back and attached to
the sledge as a trace. Though they appear at first sight to be huddled
together without regard to regularity, there is, in fact, considerable
attention paid to their arrangement, particularly in the selection of a
dog of peculiar spirit and sagacity, which is allowed, by a longer
trace, to precede the rest as leader, and to which, in turning to the
right or left, the driver usual