Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/101

Repulse Bay on a trading visit; but I have also met a very unpretentious sledge turn-out — a half-grown boy with a little sledge, drawn by a half-grown dog and a tiny pup. If the load is too big in proportion to the number of dogs, the men and women have to pull 100, a seal-thong being made fast to the sledge in the form of a loop and put over the breast. On short trips in summer there is hardly any limit to the number of people who can be loaded on a sledge. From Kôroqdjuaq to Button Point at Ponds Inlet (4 km) I saw six dogs pull six people, and 9 dogs pulled 14 people across Repulse Bay.

One can only drive in the dark when there is a track to follow. At Kûk on Southampton Island a man was on White Island for blubber at the latter end of October; to enable him to find his way back a "beacon" was placed outside the house — a big lighted bunch of moss saturated with blubber, placed in a small bowl and surrounded by a sheltering wall of snow.

When a halt is made on a journey and a snow house is to be built, the dogs are usually let loose, as they rest better without harness. A consequence of this is that everything eatable, skin clothing, meat, thongs, etc. have to be taken into the house and the sledges placed on high erections of snow. It happens, however, that to avoid this the dogs are tied, either to a stone or a board which is buried deep into the snow, or to an eye in the ice, formed by hewing two holes obliquely towards each other until they meet at the bottom.^[1] Or muzzles (siguqaut) are put on the dogs. A muzzle from Iglulik consists of a sealskin band, 3½ cm wide. 24 cm long, sewn together into a ring: at a distance of 7 cm from each other two seal-thongs are sewn on to one edge of this band, 29 and 39 cm long, and can be tied at the back of the dog's neck.

If the dogs are well fed it does not affect them, even in the most. severe cold, to sleep curled up in the snow. In case of a snow storm, they make their way into the "ante-room" of the house. But if they are thin and hungry, they shiveringly creep together, often in big clusters. trying to warm each other.

In spring, when the ice begings to melt, its surface is turned into fine needles which quickly make the dogs' paws bleed. The dogs are then furnished with dog-boots (qingmit kangmê). Four of these, from Qajûvfik, are oblong pieces of sealskin, unhaired, 24–28 × 9 cm; in the centre of each are two holes side by side for the claws, and in each of the four corners there are holes through which a thin sealskin cord is drawn to tie them with. Fitting boots on the forty or fifty paws of a big team is a task which requires great patience and can give great trouble and cause much delay.