Clothing must be light; to perspire in cold weather is unpardonable, for it will freeze inside your clothes at night. Fortunately warmth depends only on keeping heat in; and we find an impervious, light, dressed canvas best. The kossak should be made with, so to speak, no neck through which the heat which one produces can leak out. The headpiece must be attached to the tunic, which also clips tight round the wrists and round the waist to retain the heat. The edges may be bound with fur, especially about the hood, so as to be soft and tight about the face, and to keep the air out. The Eskimo cuts his own hair so as to fill that function. Light sealskin boots are best for all weathers, but in very cold, dry seasons, deerskin dressed very soft is warmer. The skin boot should be sewn with sinew which swells in water and thus keeps the stitches water-tight. These skin boots are made by the Eskimo women who chew the edges of the skin to make them soft before sewing them with deer sinew. The little Eskimo girls on the North Labrador coast are proficient in the art of chewing, as they are brought up from childhood to help their mothers in this way, the women having invariably lost their teeth at a very early age.
A light rifle should always be lashed on the komatik, as a rabbit, a partridge, or a deer gives often a light to the eyes with the fresh proteids they afford, like Jonathan's wild honey. In these temperatures, with the muscular exercise required, my strictest of vegetarian friends should permit us to bow in the House of Rimmon. One day while crossing a bay I noticed some seals popping up their heads out of the water beyond the ice edge. I had a fine leading dog bearing the unromantic name of Podge, and pure white in colour. But he was an excellent water dog, trained not only to go for birds, but to dive under water for sunken seals. Owing to their increasing fat in winter, seals as a rule float, though they invariably sink in summer. On this particular occasion, having hitched up the team we crept out to the ice edge, Podge following at my heels. Lying still on the ice, and just occasionally lifting and waggling one's leg when the seal put up his head, he mistook one for a basking brother, and being a very curious animal, he again dived, and came up a few feet away. We shot two, both of which Podge dived after and retrieved, to the unbounded joy both of ourselves and his four-footed chums, who more than gladly shared the carcasses with him later.
A friend, returning from an island, was jogging quietly along on the bay ice, when his team suddenly went wild. A bear had crossed close ahead, and before he could unlash his rifle the komatik had dashed right onto the animal, who, instead of running, stood up and showed fight. The team were all around him, rapidly snarling themselves up in their own traces. He had just time to draw his hunting knife across the traces and so save the dogs, caring much more for them than he did for the prey. Whilst his dogs held the attention of the bear, he was able, though only a few feet away, to unlash his rifle at his leisure, and very soon ended the conflict.
A gun, however, is a temptation, even to a doctor, and nearly cost one of my colleagues his life. He was crossing a big divide, or neck of land, between bays, and was twenty miles from anywhere, when his dogs took the trail of some deer, which were evidently not far off. Being short of fresh food, he hitched up his team, and also his pilot's team, leaving only his boy driver in charge, while the men pursued the caribou. He enjoined the boy very strictly not to move on any account. By an odd freak a sudden snowstorm swept out of a clear sky just after they left. They missed their way, and two days later, starving and tired out, they found their first refuge, a small house many miles from the spot where they had left the sledges. When, however, they sent a relief team to find the komatiks, they discovered the boy still "standing by" his charge.
When crossing wide stretches of country we are often obliged to camp if it comes on dark. It is quite impossible to navigate rough country when one cannot see stumps, windfalls, or snags; and I have more than once, while caught in a forest looking for our tilt, been obliged to walk ahead with a light, and even to search the snow for tracks with the help of matches, when one's torch has carelessly been left at home. On one occasion, having stopped our team in deep snow at nightfall, we left it in the woods to walk out to a village, only five or six miles distant, on our snowshoes. We entirely lost our way, and ended up at the foot of some steep cliffs which we had climbed down, thinking that our destination lay at their feet. The storm of the day had broken the sea ice from the land, and we could not get round the base of the cliffs, though we could see the village lights twinkling away, only a mile or two across the bay. Climbing steep hills through dense woods in deep snow in the dark calls for some endurance, especially as a white snow-bank looks like an open space through the dark trees. I have actually stuck my face into a perpendicular bluff, thinking that I was just coming out into the open. Oddly enough, when after much struggling we had mounted the hill, we heard voices, and suddenly met two men, who had also been astray all day, but now knew the way home. They were "all in" for want of food, and preferred camping for the night. A good fire and some chunks of sweet cake so greatly restored them, however, that we got under way again in a couple of hours, further stimulated to do so by the bitter cold, against which, in the dark, we could not make adequate shelter. Moreover, we had perspired with the violent exercise and our clothes were freezing from the inside out.
A Hilly Trail
Crossing a Brook