length because of the large part that
the phenomenon plays in the difficulty and danger of winter travel, and
because it seems hard to make those who are not familiar with it
understand it. At first sight it would seem that after a week or ten
days of fifty-below-zero weather, for instance, all water everywhere
would be frozen into quiescence for the rest of the winter. Throw a
bucket of water into the air, and it is frozen solid as soon as it
reaches the ground. There would be no more trouble, one would think,
with water. Yet some of the worst trouble the traveller has with
overflow water is during very cold weather, and it is then, of course,
that there is the greatest danger of frost-bite in getting one's feet
wet. Water-proof footwear, therefore, becomes one of the "musher's"
great concerns and difficulties. The best water-proof footwear is the
Esquimau mukluk, not easily obtainable in the interior of Alaska, but
the mukluk is an inconvenient footwear to put snow-shoes on. Rubber
boots or shoes of any kind are most uncomfortable things to travel in.
Nothing equals the moccasin on the trail, nothing is so good to
snow-shoe in. The well-equipped traveller has moccasins for dry trails
and mukluks for wet trails--and even then may sometimes get his feet
wet. Nor are his own feet his only consideration; his dogs' feet are,
collectively, as important as his own. When the dog comes out of water
into snow again the snow collects and freezes between the toes, and if
not removed will soon cause a sore and lameness. Then a dog moccasin
must be put on and the foot continually nursed and doctored. When
several dogs of a team are thus affected, it may be with several feet
each, the labour and trouble of travel are greatly increased.

So, whenever his dogs have been through water, the careful musher will
stop and go all down the line, cleaning out the ice and snow from their
feet with his fingers. Four interdigital spaces per foot make sixteen
per dog, and with a team of six dogs that means ninety-six several
operations with the bare hand (if it be done effectually) every time the
team gets into an overflow. The dogs will do it for themselves if they
are given time, tearing out the lumps of ice with their teeth; but,
inasmuch as they usually feel conscientiously obliged to eat each lump
as they pull it out, it takes much longer, and in a short daylight there
is little time to spare if the day's march is to be made.

[Sidenote: "