of the runner, the lower part of which consisted entirely of moss moulded while wet into the proper form, and being left to freeze, adhering firmly together and to the skins.  The usual shoeing of smooth ice beneath completed the runner, which, for more than six months out of twelve, in this climate, was nearly as hard as any wood; and for winter use, no way inferior to those constructed of more durable materials.  The cross-pieces which form the bottom of the sledges are made of bone, wood, or anything they can muster.  Over these is generally laid a sealskin as a flooring, and in the summer time a pair of deer’s horns are attached to the sledge as a back, which in the winter are removed, to enable them, when stopping, to turn the sledge up, so as to prevent the dogs running away with it.  The whole is 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.