216 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

Speaking of the conditions existing in the east, Whitney says that “four
dogs will haul four hundred pounds on a fair track from twenty-five to thirty-
five miles a day. In the woods where the snow is deep and the trail must
be broken the day’s trip will be fifteen to twenty miles. On a good lake
or river track, drawing a carriole, they will go forty to fifty miles a day,
and keep it up several days’!. Further on he relates being told that eight or
nine hundred and even a thousand pounds are commonly hauled by four dogs
in the Mackenzie district; but he very sensibly disclaims any belief in the
latter story. According to my own experience in the west where the country
is more hilly, all a dog team could haul the distance specified by Whitney
is two hundred pounds or slightly more, and even on a fairly good lake track

thirty-five to forty-five miles a day has always been reckoned fast travelling
west of the Rockies.

Reverting to the style of the toboggan itself, figs. 61 and 62 will now
tell the story of the Déné receptiveness. The former is an Eskimo sledge;

Fig. 62.

the latter represents its Ingalik (Alaskan Déné) counterpart, both after Dall.
The Yukon sledge is of birch, with thin, broad runners which bend with the
inequalities of the trail. As the last mentioned author remarks, there are no
more nails or pins in its make up than in that of the aboriginal toboggan.
The whole is lashed together by means of rawhide thongs. The dogs are
harnessed two and two as in northern Siberia, with a leader, to a single line
in front of the sled’.

Before taking leave of this subject, it may not be amiss to mention that
in the north even dogs occasionally wear shoes. Late in the winter, the sharp
granular snow soon renders their feet raw and bleeding. Hence the necessity

" “On Snow-Shoes to the Barren Grounds”, p. 106.
* Cf. Dall, “Travels on the Yukon’, p. 166.