h my best dogs, I started at once, the messengers
following me with their team.

My team was an especially good one. On many a long journey they had
stood by me and pulled me out of difficulties by their sagacity and
endurance. To a lover of his dogs, as every Christian man must be,
each one had become almost as precious as a child to its mother. They
were beautiful beasts: "Brin," the cleverest leader on the coast;
"Doc," a large, gentle beast, the backbone of the team for power;
"Spy," a wiry, powerful black and white dog; "Moody," a lop-eared
black-and-tan, in his third season, a plodder that never looked behind
him; "Watch," the youngster of the team, long-legged and speedy, with
great liquid eyes and a Gordon-setter coat; "Sue," a large, dark
Eskimo, the image of a great black wolf, with her sharp-pointed and
perpendicular ears, for she "harked back" to her wild ancestry;
"Jerry," a large roan-colored slut, the quickest of all my dogs on her
feet, and so affectionate that her overtures of joy had often sent me
sprawling on my back; "Jack," a jet-black, gentle-natured dog, more
like a retriever, that always ran next the sledge, and never looked
back but everlastingly pulled straight ahead, running always with his
nose to the ground.

[Illustration: THE SETTLEMENT AT ST. ANTHONY]

It was late in April, when there is always the risk of getting wet
through the ice, so that I was carefully prepared with spare outfit,
which included a change of garments, snow-shoes, rifle, compass, axe,
and oilskin overclothes. The messengers were anxious that their team
should travel back with mine, for they were slow at best and needed a
lead. My dogs, however, being a powerful team, could not be held back,
and though I managed to wait twice for their sleigh, I had reached a
village about twenty miles on the journey before nightfall, and had
fed the dogs, and was gathering a few people for prayers when they
caught me up.

During the night the wind shifted to the northeast, which brought in
fog and rain, softened the snow, and made travelling very bad,
besides heaving a heavy sea into the bay. Our drive next morning would
be somewhat over forty miles, the first ten miles on an arm of the
sea, on salt-water ice.

[Illustration: ON A JOURNEY]

In order not to be separated too long from my friends, I sent them
ahead two hours before me, appointing a rendezvous in a log tilt that
we have built in the woods as a halfway house. Th