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 to chase is the wolf, of which the greater part of them seem to have an instinctive dread, giving notice at night of their approach to the huts by a loud and continued howl.  There is not one dog in twenty among them that will voluntarily, or, indeed, without a great deal of beating, take the water, if they think it is out of their depth, and the few that would do so were spoken of as extraordinary exceptions.

The Esquimaux in general treat their dogs much as an unfeeling master does his slaves; that is, they take just as much care of them as their own interest is supposed to require.  The bitches with young are in the winter allowed to occupy a part of their own beds, where they are carefully attended and fed by the women, who will even supply the young ones with meat and water from their mouths as they do their