When Captain McClintock purchased a team of dogs from the Eskimo of King William's Land, he had a good deal to learn about their peculiarities; but the people on the _Alert_ and the _Discovery_, having a great many more dogs than he was able to obtain, had also a great deal more to learn about them. Sir George Nares, in his account of the expedition, gives some particulars which were furnished by his Eskimo dog driver, and these show that the sledge dog is quite as wise as one might expect from Captain McClintock's experiences. In every team of dogs, one is the king. He holds that position by prowess only, and has to fight and thrash every other dog in the team before he can assume the leadership. When he has once assumed it, he has to keep it by the same means; for revolutions may at any moment occur, through some younger dog aspiring to the ruling position. But while a dog has the position of authority, he exercises his rights with decision, and the remainder of the team cluster round him and support him in emergencies, or lie at his feet in times of leisure. The only one who is allowed to snarl at him without at once being bitten is the queen. She is among her sex what the king is among his; for though she depends more upon him for her prominent position than to her own fighting qualities, she maintains it, when once obtained, by a free use of her jaws upon encroachers. Consequently, when a number of teams were brought together on the decks of the vessels, all strangers to one another, there was a tremendous amount of fighting in prospect before peace could be granted. Firstly, the kings of the various teams were anxious to tussle for the supremacy; and with the prospect of some of them getting badly mauled, there were several inferiors in each team ready to do battle with their injured monarch, and, when he was disposed of, with one another, for the leadership. But their new masters, instead of letting them all loose to settle their various degrees of authority in their own hereditary fashion, tied them up where they could see and hear one another without exchanging a bite. The kings, naturally warlike and ferocious, could only snap at their inferiors as they bayed in their rage, and the inferiors could only bay in their pain, and so between them the ship's company were kept awake by night and annoyed by day. When at length opportunity occurred for liberating the dogs and giving them some exercise over the ice, great care had to be taken so as to prevent a wholesale mêlée. Each team, as they were freed from their deck chains, were led on to the ice and made fast to a sledge, two men being in charge of each sledge for the purpose of learning how to drive. And a highly exciting time they had of it, for not only did every dog want to start in its own direction as soon as they were harnessed, but every team wanted to attack every other team directly they appeared.