North of 53, during the winter, I have seen sleighs drawn by horses, mules, dogs of every breed and description and even men.
But once I saw the strangest outfit of all. We were sitting beside a fire on the bank of a river only a few miles from the railway line when we heard a yell and a strange noise which appeared to be a combination of a bellow and a howl.
We got up and, to our astonishment, we saw, racing up the river on the ice in a smother of snow, a small sleigh drawn by a large yellow dog and a very small red bull. The dog was in the lead, tied to the sleigh by at least twelve yards of rope. The bull, harnessed to the sleigh by two leather traces, with his head down and his tail in the air was charging full tilt at the dog who was scampering down the trail as fast as he could lay his four paws on the snow.
On the sleigh was a load of pressed hay and, on the top of it, clung a fat man with a bushy beard and a very white face. Before we could say a word, man, bull and dog vanished round a bend of the river.