TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION. 215

When in sight of game, or through sheer viciousness if tired of the work,
some will at times manage to get loose. Others, too, are in the habit of
gnawing off the leather traces ahead of them, thinking thereby to free them-
selves from their temporary bondage. When this foible is known, the traces
within the reach of their teeth have to be of steel or iron’.

It requires some training to drive a dog team properly. The accompany-
ing full page illustration represents one of the many obstacles which are daily
met on the way. And then there are the turns in the road, the descents and
the ascents, and, worse than all, the slopes of the steep hills to follow, when
a false step or a wronk jerk of the stout rope which the driver uses as a
rudder at the rear of the toboggan would not only capsize the load, but hurl
it along with the team to the bottom of the precipice.

Sleighing over lakes or plains is not so difficult, but infinitely more
tedious. Unless the track be exceptionally good or the load very light, the
driver has almost constantly to help the dogs by pushing with a stick, which
he is but too often tempted to launch at some particular member of the team
too lazy to work, or which only feigns to pull — for some dogs are almost
human in the tricks they indulge in while harnessed to a sleigh.

The dogs are now of a mongrel breed. The largest in the band is placed
immediately in front of the sledge, and on him devolves the task of steering,
while the most alert and intelligent is called the foregoer and leads the team.
A man on snow-shoes usually precedes them, ready to help the driver when
necessary.

At night, one dried salmon is the usual ration per dog in the west,
while in times of plenty half as much in the morning and a quarter of a fish
after the noonday rest may form the menu of two other meals. But the dogs
are more often fed only at night, as in northern Siberia, and in the east their
daily allowance consists in two white-fish weighing about three pounds apiece.

Nowadays improved toboggans for passengers are made, much after the
pattern of that represented in our full page illustration, though in the west
they are more often covered up about two-thirds of their length from the front.
These go by the French name carriole, and, when up to date, they resemble
in shape large cradles made of parchment moose skin, wherein the traveller
is snuggly ensconced while his driver follows, whip and steering rope in hands.

For the sake of expeditiousness, when the snow is deep and no track
is beaten, one of the crew generally goes ahead as far as he can in the evening
while the others are engaged in preparing the encampment and supper. This
path immediately freezes over, and proves very handy on the morrow, when
a start is often made before dawn. An identical practice obtains in the basin
of the Amoor?.

1 In Chapter XII of Bush’s work already referred to the reader will find an excellent

sketch of the ways of sled dogs.
? Ibid., p. 167,