ly addresses himself. This choice is made
without regard to age or sex, and the rest of the dogs take precedence
according to their training or sagacity, the least effective being put
nearest the sledge. The leader is usually from eighteen to twenty feet
from the fore part of the sledge, and the hindermost dog about half that
distance, so that when ten or twelve are running together, several are
nearly abreast of each other. The driver sits quite low on the fore part
of the sledge, with his feet overhanging the snow on one side, and
having in his hand a whip, of which the handle, made either of wood,
bone, or whalebone, is eighteen inches, and the lash more than as many
feet in length. The part of the thong next the handle is platted a
little way down to stiffen it and give it a spring, on which much of its
use depends; and that which composes the lash is chewed, by the women to
make it flexible in frosty weather. The men acquire from their youth
considerable expertness in the use of this whip, the lash of which is
left to trail along the ground by the side of the sledge, and with which
they can inflict a very severe blow on any dog at pleasure. Though the
dogs are kept in training entirely by fear of the whip, and indeed
without it would soon have their own way, its immediate effect is always
detrimental to the draught of the sledge; for not only does the
individual that is struck draw back and slacken his trace, but generally
turns upon his next neighbour, and this, passing on to the next,
occasions a general divergency, accompanied by the usual yelping and
showing of teeth. The dogs then come together again by degrees, and the
draught of the sledge is accelerated; but even at the best of times, by
this rude mode of draught, the traces of one third of the dogs form an
angle of thirty or forty degrees on each side of the direction in which
the sledge is advancing. Another great inconvenience attending the
Esquimaux method of putting the dogs to, besides that of not employing
their strength to the best advantage, is the constant entanglement of
the traces by the dogs repeatedly doubling under from side to side to
avoid the whip, so that, after running a few miles, the traces always
require to be taken off and cleared.

In directing the sledge the whip acts no very essential part, the driver
for this purpose using certain words, as the carters do with us, to make
the dogs turn more to the right or left. To these a good le