It often happens that there are not a sufficient number of dogs, or that they are poor and unable to travel with sufficient rapidity, and then the people have to put on harness and help. First the women and children engage in this labor, and, lastly, the men. And the drivers will sit on the sled and smoke, with the utmost composure, while their wives and daughters are tugging in the harness. The women do not mind this treatment, for they are accustomed to it and look upon it as the proper thing. In the summer the Esquimaux use their dogs while travelling as pack animals, and a stranger would be astonished to see what loads these dogs will carry. I have seen a fine large dog that would carry two saddles of reindeer meat, or the entire fore-quarters of two reindeer. His back would be bent low beneath the burden he bore, but still he would struggle along, panting the while and regarding his master with a look of the deepest affection whenever he came near him yet ever ready to fight any other dog that got in his way. These, then, were the faithful comrades of our march. Before the day appointed by Lieutenant Schwatka they were ready. We were all eager to start. The projected journey was one which more than one expedition had undertaken without success since Sir Leopold McClintock's memorable sledge journey, which accomplished so much, and left so much to be desired. We were determined to bring it to a successful issue. Our igloo life at Camp Daly during the previous winter had inured us to the climate, so that, though we often found the cold intensely disagreeable, we were free from the evil consequences that have assailed many expeditions and make Arctic travel so dangerous, though few have been exposed to such low temperature as was our party, especially during the return trip in the winter of 1879-80. Previous sledge journeys had taught us how to clothe ourselves and otherwise provide against the cold, and we had already become acquainted with Inuit fare, so that when the emergency arrived when we were compelled to subsist entirely upon such food, we did not regard it with that repugnance that those would who had not become accustomed to it. In other words, we had become thoroughly acclimated during the eight months we had already lived in the country. CHAPTER IV. IN THE SLEDGES.