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One winter's day in the seventies, when Mr. William Cornwallis King was in charge of Fort Rae, one of the Hudson's Bay Company's posts on Great Slave Lake, he was snowshoeing to a number of Indian camps to collect furs, and had under his command several Indians in charge of his dog-trains.
Thus for over two centuries the Hudson's Bay Company had been sending its mails through the great wilderness of Northern Canada. That afternoon five dog-trains arrived from outlying posts. They had come to join the Dog Brigade that was to leave Fort Consolation first thing in the morning on its southern way to the far-off railroad.
One winter I was able to make quite a long journey with my dog-trains, arriving home as late as the eighteenth of May. At that date, however, the snow had all disappeared and the frost was nearly all out of the ground. The cold is intense, the spirit thermometer indicating from thirty to sixty below zero. We have seen the mercury frozen as solid as lead for weeks together.
Many of the dog-trains of the North are taught to understand nothing but the sting of the whip and will respond only to brutal treatment. The second night was a repetition of the first. The three were divided into two camps. Whaley or Jessie McRae watched West every minute. There was a look in his eye they distrusted, a sulky malice back of which seemed to smoke banked fires of murderous desire.
The dogs which we use in the dog-trains, are generally of any breed that has in it size, endurance, and sagacity. The Esquimaux breed of dogs formerly predominated; but in later years there has been such an admixture of other varieties, that a pure Esquimaux dog is now a rarity except at some of the most northern posts and missions.
"Oh, you'll have more visitors than you want." "Shall we, though?" Then, with a modified rapture: "Indians, I suppose, and and missionaries." "Traders, too, and miners, and this year cheechalkos as well. You are directly on the great highway of winter travel. Now that there's a good hard crust on the snow you will have dog-trains passing every week, and sometimes two or three." It was good news!
This has been for generations a favourite shooting ground of the Indians, and here for the day the two lads and their Indian attendants came. They had made the journey very early in the morning, and so their dogs had had no trouble with the ice, which in the night frost had quickly become firm and hard. In the friendly shelter of some trees they had secured their dog-trains.
But it was not till one day when he broke for a while under the tremendous strain that his extraordinary efforts got into the light of public notice. Here is part of his modest report when he was detailed to escort a lunatic from Fort Chippewyan to Fort Saskatchewan: "I left Chippewyan in charge of the lunatic on December 17, 1904, with the interpreter and two dog-trains.
And at the experimental farm you shall see nearly every vegetable you ever heard of." "I don't understand it," said Rob; "we always thought of this country as being arctic we never speak of it without thinking of dog-trains and snowshoes." "The secret is this," said Captain Saunders. "Our summers are short, but our days are very long. Now, wheat requires sunshine, daylight, to make it grow.
Then dreamily puffing at his pipe he added: "I remember when six dog-trains of four dogs each hauled from Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca to Fort Vermillion on the Peace River loads that averaged six hundred and fifty pounds per sled not including the grub for the men and dogs and the men's dunnage.
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