New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1906-01-21
AL A S HAS DOG S
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CoERfaed Prom page ~
ever. picked for their speed and endur-
ance; the average dogs mush" more
slowly on their great trips through the
wilderness. A stampeder like Raw
klu1nb nurses his dogs strength with
assiduous care, and in consequence
usually arrives at the new camp long
before the younger and more impetuous
gold-seeker who has no mercy on his
team. At the end of one great mush -
of four hundred miles which his SIX dogs,
hauling an outfit weighing one ton on
double-ended bob-Sled, covered in
/ thirty-one days, Klumb's team was in
better condition physically than at the
/ beginning of the weary journey. Another
team of eight dogs in the dead of fierce
winter hauled half a ton Of provisions
from Dawson to the Koyukuk diggings,
distance of eight hundred and forty
miles in the stampede to the latter place,
arriving at their destination in perfect
condition. At the height of the Nome
stampede, miners travelled sixteen hun
| dred miles down the Yukon from Dawson
| to Bering Sea with their dog teams, some
OF them making sensationally fast trips
/ in spite of accident, hardship and heart
| breaking weather
! In summer their lot is an easy one,
most of them leading a life of Incidence
until the return of the snow, though some
are worked in packing, the average dog
being able to carry a fifty-pound pack
on his back Notwithstanding the broil-
ing heat under which the interior SwelterS
during the long days when there is almost
perpetual sunshine, few Northern dogs
become mad in that period of the year
The mad dog in Alaska and the Yukon
is peculiar to the cold months when the
thermometer drops to sixty and seventy
degrees below zero.
AS the fall comes to an end and they
feel the first chill of winter in the air,
the trail dogs make life hideOus with
their mournful wolf-howls, half a dozen
of them being able to make as much
noise apparently as a whole pack of
wolves.
In Dawson, where number of whistles
announce the noon hour, the dogs burst
into their nightmare of a chorus when
they begin to blow. 1t is the same when
a steamer sounds her whistle as she
swings around a bend in the Yukon into
sight of the city. So used have the dogs
become to yelling in unison with the
boats signal that if one of the CANNES
catches sight of a vessels smoke rising
from among the hills a couple of miles
from Dawson, he begins his dolorOus howl
in anticipation of the whistle, and other
dogs join in, until the clamor is
wonderful.
One old dog, Steamboat Bob of Circle
CITY. is famous along the Yukon as being
"daffv" on the question OF steamers, his
powerful voice never failing to warn the
inhabitants of that place when a steamer
is approaching Each spring after the
breakup of the ice, Bob takes up a posi-
ton on a hill near the city, whence he
can observe the Yukon Valley for several
miles, and as the smoke of the first
steamer of the season rises in the distance
his tremendous screech announces the
glad tidings to the entire community.
So faithful a lookout is Bob that the
inhabitants rely on him without fear of
disappointment, though If some one says
the word steamboat" to the old dog