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 leader attends with admirable precision, especially if his own name be repeated at the same time, looking behind over his shoulder with great earnestness, as if listening to the directions of the driver.  On a beaten track, or even where a single foot or sledge mark is occasionally discernible, there is not the slightest trouble in guiding the dogs; for even in the darkest night and in the heaviest snowdrift, there is little or no danger of their losing the road, the leader keeping his nose near the ground, and directing the rest with wonderful sagacity.  Where, however, there is no beaten track, the best driver among them makes a terribly circuitous course, as all the Esquimaux roads plainly show; these generally occupying an extent of six miles, when with a horse and sledge the journey would scarcely have amounted to five.  On rough ground, as among hummocks of ice, the sledge would be frequently overturned or altogether stopped if the driver did not repeatedly get off, and, by lifting or drawing it to one side, steer it clear of those accidents.  At all times, indeed, except on a smooth and well-made road, he is pretty constantly employed thus with his feet, which, together with his never-ceasing vociferations and frequent use of the whip, renders the driving of one of these vehicles by no means a pleasant or easy task.  When the driver wishes to stop the sledge, he calls out “Wo, woa,” exactly as our carters do; but the attention paid to his command depends altogether on his ability to enforce it.  If the weight is small and the journey homeward, the dogs are not to be thus delayed; the driver is therefore obliged to dig his heels into the snow to obstruct their progress; and, having thus succeeded in stopping them, he stands up with one leg before the foremost crosspiece of the sledge, till, by means of laying the whip gently over each dog’s head, he has made them all lie down.  He then takes care not to quit his position; so that, should the dogs set off, he is thrown upon the sledge, instead of being left behind by them.

With heavy loads the dogs draw best with one of their own people, especially a woman, walking a little way ahead; and in this case they are sometimes enticed to mend their pace by holding a mitten to the mouth, and then making the motion of cutting it with a knife, and throwing it on the snow, when the dogs, mistaking it for meat, hasten forward to pick it up.  The women also entice them from the huts in 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