The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1889-01-26

10 HUDSON Day, Hn6HCe uSAI ouHILhSi
a ship would take us to the United
States.
The first cold snap OF winter-and in
the Arctic regions winter sets in earlier
than in our own country by two or
three months - started the reindeer,
now fat and in fine fur. to migrate
southwark where the climate would be
a little mildcr; so we had to scurry
around pretty lively to kill enough of
them for clothing, bedding and meat
until we should overtake them farther
south again.
We were quite successful, and early
in November we started back. hoping
and expecting to reach home in Il
month or two at the most-an eXpecta-
ton that was dragged out two or three
months, even longer than that, and
gave us sledge' journey through the
whole Of the winter, an undertaking
before unknown even among the Es-
kimo.
Our dogs were good and strong and
covered with fat when we started, and
every thing worked along happily
enough while we were passing from one
Eskimo village to the other. where we
could exchange trading material for
dog food.
The last village we left November
10. As our reindeer meat was fast dis
appearing had not seen one of
these animals since the seventh of Oc-
tober--we did not feed our dogs again
until the fourteenth of the month.
This day we left the head of a
deep inlet and thought that by
the time another four days had
passed we would be at Dangerous
Rapids at the mouth of Backs Great
Fish river, whore natives catch fish
and where we could therefore replen-
ish our supplies for our dogs without
using more OF our precious reindeer
meat. Still we were travelling across
wholly unknown country, and every
thing was purely conjecture.
The four days faded into five, then
six. On the seventh my dog-driver.
ToolOoah, fed the dogs from the rein
deer meat. | had felt as if must have
them fed before, but l fully compre-
hended that he knew the best and l
must let him have his own way about
the poor beasts.
Then came another long stretch of
six days, till November IS, before the
dogs were again fed, and now only
lightly.
Then came the third stretch without
food-an interval OF seven days, which
ended on the fifth day of December
when we reached the Rapids, and found
a huge cairn of fish put up by the
Eskimo. This we bought, and gave
our poor polar puppies most royal
feed. The thermometer had been as
low as minus forty degrees. We had
nearly two hundred miles,
and the intervals of feeding had been,
for three times, about a week apart
yet not single dog of the nineteen in
my sledge had succumbed, although
each one had dragged over double his
own weight through it all. Such
trip would have killed every dog of
any other breed but these from this
part of Eskimo land, while white men
pulling such d sledge with such
a load would have starved before they
had made one-third of the way. Little
enough do we know about winter
travel, in comparison with the northern
In as cunning q way as one
could devise they cover the bottom of
their broad sledge runners with ice
which makes it so slippery that a dog
can pull four or five times his own
weight on sledge on the best snow;
without this ice he probably could not
pull one-Quarter as much. One who
has not seen this great aid to sledging
can not imagine what help it is; and
when read of the many Arctic sLedge-
trips by those who know nothing of it
my admiration for their doing SO well
under such difficulties as many of them
have had, is fully equal to my pity that
they did not know how to wipe half or
two-thirds thcir labors away 1t is an
intricate and delicate affair, known
only to perfection among the Eskimo.
We left The kind Eskimo on Backs
. liver December Il, having been joined
by my other two sledges, From now
on, the Thermometer sank to 60 o
Go and once 60 ,, and tho gentlest
zephyrs cut like ra2ors. We had sup
posed we would make twenty or thirty
miles day on the level ico of the
river and be homo by New Years. But
instead of being better sledging it was
much worse than on the rolling land,
and we seldom made. over i've or six
miles a day. So at last we left the
river and started straight-away across
the hills.
On the third of January it was
seventy-one below zero-onc hundred
and three degrees below freezing-the
coolest weather on the trip and the
coolest ever endured by white men
travelling. for that day we moved camp
ten or twelve miles further on. Our
fish were now rapidly disappearing,
and coupled with the intense cold and
hard work our poor dogs were faring
badly. At the time we left the river