The baby of the mud hut is a charming young lady, a graduate of a school in the United States, and the successful member of a useful profession.

Both of the little naked boys taken from the island that snowy day are grown men now, and graduates of the famous Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.  One is a master carpenter, the other the manager of a big trading store on the Labrador coast.

Now, as I write, in the fall of 1921, the walls of a new fine concrete home for the children are under construction at St. Anthony, to be used in conjunction with the original wooden building which is crowded to capacity.  Children of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain giving of their pennies made the new building possible.  More money is needed to furnish it, but enough will surely be given for the homeless little ones of the Labrador must be cared for.

And so, in the end, great things grew out of the suffering and death of Gabriel Pomiuk, the little Eskimo lad.  His splendid courage and cheerfulness has led to happiness for many other little sufferers.

XVII

THE DOGS OF THE ICE TRAIL

One of the most interesting features of Labrador life in winter is dog travel.  The dogs are interesting the year round, for they are always in evidence winter and summer, but in the fall when the sea freezes and snow comes, they take a most important place in the life of the people of the coast.  They are the horses and automobiles and locomotives of the country.  No one can travel far without them.

The true Eskimo dog of Labrador, the “husky,” as he is called, is the direct descendant of the great Labrador wolf.  The Labrador wolf is the biggest and fiercest wolf on the North American continent, and the Eskimo dog of northern Labrador, his brother, is the biggest and finest sledge dog to be found anywhere in the world.  He is larger and more capable than the Greenland species of which so much has been written, and he is quite superior to those at present found in Alaska.

The true husky dog of northern Labrador has the head and jawls and upstanding ears of the wild wolf.  He has the same powerful shoulders, thick forelegs, and bristling mane.  He does not bark like other dogs, but has the characteristic howl of the wolf.  There is apparently but one difference between him and the wild wolf, and this comes, possibly, through domestication.  He curls his tail over his back, while the wolf does not.  Even this distinction does not always hold, for I have seen and used dogs that did not curl their tail.  These big fellows often weigh a full hundred pounds and more.

Indeed these northern huskies and the wild wolves mix together sometimes to fight, and sometimes in good fellowship.  Once I had a wolf follow my komatik for two days, and at night when we stopped and turned our dogs loose the wolf joined them and staid the night with them only to slink out of rifle shot with the coming of dawn.