At least a year's experience is necessary to enable a white man to handle a dog team with anything approaching efficiency, and even then one cannot hope to approach the performance of an Eskimo. The failure to enlist Eskimos as dog drivers has been the real cause of the failure of many an Arctic expedition.
It is advised, then, that the traveler employ at so much per day or for the trip driver and dogs. It is an unsafe experiment to start off with a dog team unattended by an experienced man. The owner of the team will supply also the necessary dog harness, his own dog whip and general dog traveling paraphernalia, including the komatik.
Sledges or komatiks vary in different localities as to width, length and minor methods of construction. The average komatik is two feet wide and ten feet long but as stated, they vary in different localities, a uniform width being maintained to suit the local conditions of the region in which they are used. For example, wide and comparatively short komatiks are employed in Quebec, while the Ungava komatik is but sixteen inches wide. These latter komatiks are usually fifteen or sixteen feet in length, however. The runners stand ten inches high. This is, in fact, the heaviest and most efficient komatik I have ever seen. Each runner is made from a single piece of timber and is from two and one-half to three inches thick. It is designed for the roughest possible use, and is, I believe, better adapted to this purpose than the Greenland komatik because more substantially built. The latter is peculiar in that it has upstands at the rear for guiding it.
Crossbars, extending an inch or so on either side of the runners and from one to two inches apart, are lashed into place with rawhide. When the rawhide shrinks the komatik becomes firm. Iron fastenings being rigid would break too readily, particularly in intense cold, to be reliable.
The traveler will do well, therefore, to purchase if he does not hire his komatik at the point of departure, as in so doing he will secure one of correct design for the region to be traversed.
It is well to have a box made the width of the komatik two or three feet long, and about fourteen inches deep to lash upon the rear end of the komatik in which cooking utensils and a portion of the food supply, as well as odds and ends, may be carried. This should be supplied with a hinged cover, and hook or clasp by which the cover may be securely fastened down.
The best lash for securing the load in position is one of sealskin, though ordinary hemp rope will do. Before lashing, the tarpaulin should be neatly folded over the top of load to protect it.
One end of the lash is secured to an end of the crossbar at the forward end of the load, brought across the load and under the other end, then across, skipping a couple of crossbars, and back again skipping a couple of crossbars, thus threading it from side to side under the ends of every second or third crossbar to the rear bar, where it is brought across the load to the opposite end of this crossbar and crisscrossed across the load again to the forward crossbar to be tied.
THE END
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