akes place, the price of dogs rises enormously. Any sort
of good dog on the spot may be worth a hundred dollars, or a hundred and
fifty, and the man with a kennel would make a small fortune out of hand.
But at other times it is hard to get twenty-five dollars for the best of
dogs.

The cost of maintenance of a dog team is considerable. When the
mail-routes went all down the Yukon, and dogs were used exclusively, the
contracting company estimated that it cost seventy-five dollars per head
per annum to feed its dogs; while to the traveller in remote regions,
buying dog feed in small parcels here and there, the cost is not less
than one hundred dollars per head. Of course, a man engaged in dog
raising would have his own fish-wheel on the Yukon and would catch
almost all that his dogs would eat. Fish is plentiful in Alaska; it is
transportation that costs. Dogs not working can do very well on
straight dried fish, but for the working dog this ration is supplemented
by rice and tallow or other cereal and fat; not only because the animal
does better on it, but also because straight dried fish is a very bulky
food, and weight for weight goes not nearly so far. Cooking for the dogs
is troublesome, but economical of weight and bulk, and conserves the
vigour of the team. In the summer-time the dogs are still an expense.
They must be boarded at some fish camp, at a cost of about five dollars
per head per month.

The white man found the dog team in use amongst the natives all over the
interior, but he taught the Indian how to drive dogs. The natives had
never evolved a "leader." Some fleet stripling always ran ahead, and the
dogs followed. The leader, guided by the voice, "geeing" and "hawing,"
stopping and advancing at the word of command, is a white man's
innovation, though now universally adopted by the natives. So is the dog
collar. The "Siwash harness" is simply a band that goes round the
shoulders and over the breast. In the interior the universal "Siwash"
hitch was tandem, and is yet, but as trails have widened and improved,
more and more the tendency grows amongst white men to hitch two abreast;
and the most convenient rig is a lead line to which each dog is attached
independently by a single-tree, either two abreast, or, by adding a
further length to the lead line, one behind the other, so that on a
narrow trail the tandem rig may be quickly resorted to.

[Sidenote: THE DOCKING OF TAILS]

One advantage of the change fro