a
similar manner. The rate at which they travel depends, of course, on the
weight they have to draw and the road on which their journey is
performed. When the latter is level, and very hard and smooth,
constituting what in other parts of North America is called "good
sleighing," six or seven dogs will draw from eight to ten hundred
weight, at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour for several hours
together, and will easily, under those circumstances, perform a journey
of fifty or sixty miles a day; on untrodden snow, five-and-twenty or
thirty miles would be a good day's journey. The same number of well-fed
dogs, with a weight of only five or six hundred pounds (that of the
sledge included), are almost unmanageable, and will, on a smooth road,
run any way they please at the rate of ten miles an hour. The work
performed by a greater number of dogs is, however, by no means in
proportion to this; owing to the imperfect mode already described of
employing the strength of these sturdy creatures, and to the more
frequent snarling and fighting occasioned by an increase of numbers.

In the summer, when the absence of snow precludes the use of sledges,
the dogs are still made useful on journeys and hunting excursions, by
being employed to carry burdens in a kind of saddle-bags laid across
their shoulders. A stout dog thus accoutred will accompany his master,
laden with a weight of about twenty or twenty-five pounds.

The scent of the Esquimaux dogs is excellent; and this property is
turned to account by their masters in finding the seal-holes, which
these invaluable animals will discover entirely by the smell at a very
great distance. The track of a single deer upon the snow will in like
manner set them off at a full gallop when travelling, at least a quarter
of a mile before they arrive at it, when they are with difficulty made
to turn in any other direction; and the Esquimaux are accustomed to set
them after those animals to hunt them down when already wounded with an
arrow. In killing bears the dogs act a very essential part; and two or
three of them, when led on by a man, will eagerly attack one of those
ferocious creatures. An Esquimaux seldom uses any other weapon than his
spear and _panna_ in this encounter, for which the readiness of the dogs
may be implied from the circumstance of the word "nen-nook" (bear) being
often used to encourage them when running in a sledge. Indeed, the only
animal which they are not eager t