Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1889-04-05
SHEPHERDsTOWN W. VA, FRIDAY, APRIL s. 1ss9
and meat until we should overtake
them farther south again.

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 a
month or two at the most-an expec-
tation that was dragged out two or
three months, even longer than that,
and gave US sledge journey through
the whole of the winter, an under
taking before unknown even among
the Eskimo.
Our dogs were good and strong and
covered with fat when we started, and
everything worked along happily
enough while we were passing from one
Eskimo village 10 the other. where we
could exchange trading material for
dog food.
The last village We left November
10. As our reindeer meat was fast
disappearing-we had not seen one of
these animals since the seventh of Oc-
tober-we did not feed our dogs again
until the fourteenth ef-the month.
This day we left the head of deep
inlet and thought that by the time an
other four days had passed We would
be at Dangerous Rapids al the mouth
of Backs Great Fish river, where ma
/ tives catch fish and where we could
therefore replenish our supplies for
our dogs without using more of our
/ precious reindeer meat. Still we were
travelling across an unknown country,
and everything was purely conjec-
/ ture.
The four days faded into five, then
six. On the seventh my dog driver,
Toolooah, fed the dogs from the rein
der meat. / had felt as if must have
/ them fed before, but | fully compre-
hended that he knew them best and /
must let him have his own way about
the poor beasts.
Then came another long stretch Of
six days, till November %, before the
dogs were again fed, and now only
lightly.
Then came the third stretch with
out food-an interval of seven days,
which ended on the fifth day of De
cember, when we reached the Rapids
and found huge cairn of fish put up
by the Eskimo. This we bought and
gave our poor polar puppies a most
royal feed. The thermometer had
been as low as minus forty degrees.
We had travelled nearly two hundred
miles. and the intervals of feeding had
been, for three times, about week
apart-yet not a 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
other breed but those from this part
of Eskimo land, while white men pull
ing such 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 north
ern natives. In as cunning way as
one could devise they cover the bot
tom 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 a sledge on the
best snow; without this ice he proba-
bly, 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 admira-
ton for their doing so well under such
difficulties as many of them had, Is
fully equal to my pity that they did
not know how to wipe half or two
thirds their labors away. 1t is an in
tricate and delicate affair, known only
to perfection among the Eskimo.
We left the kind Eskimo on Backs
River December l2, having been
joined by my other two sledges.
From now on the thermometer sank
to 60 degrees, 65 degrees and once 90
degrees, and the gentlest zephyrs cut
like razors We had supposed we
would make twenty or thirty miles a
day on the level ice Of the river and
be home by New Years. But instead
Of being better sledging it was much
worse than on the rolling land, and
we seldom made over five 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 sew
enty-one below Zero-one 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 OH.
Our fish were now rapidly disappear
ing. and coupled with the intense cold
and hard work our poor dogs were
faring badly. At the time We left the
river we had lost one fine dog. We
were stripped Of all but nineteen when
we reached Hudson Bay. Worst Of
all our fatty food was entirely gone.
With a goodly amount Of this per
son or an animal can resist bitter cold;
but the lean and blue reindeer meat
gave but little sustenance to the poor
brutes doing such hard work in such
severe weather. There was none too
much TO give them, either, so short
I were the days-but two or three hours