Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
Equeesik and his brother Owanork, who were to accompany us, and Nanook and Blucher were thus carried off from Depot Island, with one of our sleds and a dead walrus which they were cutting up at the time. They did not get back for four or five days, but suffered scarcely at all while away. They built an igloo on the largest cake they could reach, and of course had plenty to eat.
Our hearts leaped up and I think the dogs' hearts leaped up also at the sight. I called to Nanook as we stopped on the bank, "Nanook, there's the good old Yukon again!" and he lifted his voice in that intelligent, significant bark that surely meant that he saw and understood.
Some doubt I had had of old Lingo lasting through the winter, but none of Nanook, and they were the only survivors of my original team.
But just before we reached Chena, as we passed the fish camp where the dogs had been boarded the previous summer, Nanook stopped the whole team, looked up at the bank and gave utterance to his pronounced five barks on the descending scale.
Nanook was in as good spirits as ever I knew him that last night, coming to me and plumping his huge fore paws down on my moccasins, challenging me to play the game of toe treading that he loved; and whenever he beat me at it he would seize my ankle in his jaws and make me hop around on one foot, to his great delight. He was my talking dog.
All they had to eat on the way down was walrus blubber, and so great was their anxiety for us that Lieutenant Schwatka and Eeglee-leock left the sled behind at Chesterfield Inlet with Nanook, and walked one day and night without resting, reaching Marble Island at six o'clock in the morning, after a walk of about seventy-five miles.
But he never found his way to my heart as Nanook did. I loved Nanook, and had lost something personal out of my life in losing him. There are other dogs that I am fond of better dogs in some ways that either Nanook or Lingo, swifter certainly but I think I shall never have two dogs again that have meant as much to me as these two.
None of the other dogs seemed to notice or recognise the place, but Nanook said as plainly as if he had uttered speech: "Well, well! there's where I spent last summer!" We reached Fairbanks on the 11th of April, in time for Good Friday and Easter, after an absence of four months and a half with the accumulated mail of all that period awaiting me.
But it is at such times, too, that one appreciates at his full value such a noble puller as our wheel dog Nanook. He spares himself not at all; the one absorbing occupation of every nerve and muscle of his body is pulling. His trace is always taut, or, if he lose footing for a moment and the trace slacken, he is up and at it again that the sled lose not its momentum if he can help it.
As the hunters got nothing, we were without even our "kow" the next day, with the prospect of remaining without food until Eeglee-leock and Nanook got back from Marble Island, where they went for relief from the natives there three days ago. Lieutenant Schwatka went with them in order to try to get some food for us from the ship.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking