The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1889-03-23

When our summer task was done
of following the lonely line of death
and burying the bones, we prepared
for our winters sledge journey home
to Hudson's Bay. whence next summer
. 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
little milder; 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 a
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-we 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 sthought that by
the time another four days had
passed we would be at Dangerous
Rapids at the mouth of Backs Great
Fish river, where 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
a wholly unknown country, and every
thing was purely conjecture.
The four days faded into five, ther
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 fully compre
hended that he knew the best and
must let him have his own way abou
the poor beasts.
Then came another long stretch o
six days, till November %, before thu
dogs were again fed, and now onl.
lightly.
| Then came the third stretch withou
food an interval of seven days, which
ended on the fifth day. of Decembe
when we reached the Rapids, and fount
huge cairn of fish put up by tn
Eskimo. This we bought, and CAV
our poor polar puppies most roya
feed. The thermometer had been a
low as minus forty degrees. We ha'
travelled nearly two hundred miles
and the intervals of feeding had been
for three times, about week apart
yet not single dog of the nineteen i
my sledge had succumbed, althoug
each one had dragged over double hi
own weight through it all. Such
trip would have killed every dog @
any other breed but these from thi
part of Eskimo land, while white me
pulling such a sledge with sue
a load would have starved before the
had made one-third of the way. Littl
, enough do we know about winte
travel, in comparison with the norther
natives. In as cunning way as on
could devise they cover the bottom 9
their broad sledge runners with ic
, which makes it so slippery that do
can pull four or five times his ow
weight on a sledge on the best snow
, without this ice he probably could nc
pull one-quarter as much. One VIII
, has not seen this great aid to sledgin
, can not imagine what a help it is; an
when read Of the many Arctic sledge
trips by those who know nothing OF
| my admiration for their doing 80 we
under such difficulties as many of theI
have had, is fully equal to my pity ths
, they did not know how to wipe half 9
; two-thirds their labors away. 1t is a
intricate and delicate affair, know
: only to perfection among the Eskimo
Al We left the kind Eskimo on Back
: liver December II. having been joine
1 by my other two sledges. From mo-