day to start, as soon as the ice will be safe, for
the island fisheries and bring home the dogs."

"The dogs! the dogs! yes, hurrah for the dogs!" cried all the boys in
unison.

So everything was for the moment forgotten, or postponed, in their eager
anticipation to become intimately acquainted with the dogs, about which
they had heard so much. During the summer months the dogs were away to
a distant island, where they were cared for by Kinesasis, a careful old
Indian, who with a few nets easily caught all the fish they required for
food. This island was quite out of the route of travel, and so our
young friends had seen but little of Mr Ross's dogs, about which many
interesting stories had been told them. Now at the prospect of soon
seeing them they were greatly delighted.

Although so much can be done with dogs in winter in those high
latitudes, there is practically no use for them in summer. It is true
that some enterprising missionaries had used them for ploughing up their
little potato fields and gardens, and yet it was slow work and not long
continued. But through the long winter the dog is practically the only
draft animal that can be utilised by the inhabitants of those regions.
From the far-off forest the wood for fuel is dragged home by the dogs.
The frozen fish, which are caught and piled up on stages beyond the
reach of wolves or other wild beasts, are drawn home to the villages
from the distant fisheries by the well-trained dogs.

When a Christian decides to exchange his old wigwam for a house, all the
squared timber and logs required in its construction are dragged, if not
floated by water in the summer time, it may be several miles, by the
dogs. Christian hunters use them to drag home the moose and reindeer or
other heavy game they may shoot. Formerly their wives and mothers had
to do this heavy work, but now Christianity has relegated this and many
other heavy duties to the dogs.

However, the greatest and most arduous work to which the dogs are put is
that of drawing the canoles and dog-sleds of travellers and tourists or
fur traders for long distances through various parts of that great
northern land. Without the dogs, travelling in that country would be
practically impossible in the winter months. So full of lakes and
rivers is the country that it is possible to go almost anywhere in a
birch canoe in summer by making occasional portages. But when the
severe cold freezes up those water s