CHAPTER XIII.

THE WINTER MASTERS OF THE LABRADOR.

By the dogs of Labrador, I do not mean the Labrador dogs so well known to sportsmen, and owned by a few favoured people in Great Britain.

So far _as I know_, not a single representative of this breed exists to-day in Labrador, nor was I able to trace any reasonable tradition concerning their origin there. The only dogs to be found on the coast are the wolf-like huskies, and these have so marked a place in the national life that I must devote a chapter to them.

The Labrador possesses a vast and most intricate coast line, and is over 500,000 square miles in extent, yet the Eskimo or husky dog is for over half the year the master of the inhabited part of the peninsula. He is a wonderful animal, of enormous value as a means of communication between the settlements, which, without him, would be isolated for the greater part of the year.

The husky has been both advertised and extolled in recent fiction. Some of the novels which have been written round him are remarkable on many counts; artistic in treatment and accurate in detail, they appeal very strongly to the imagination. But the obvious necessity of attracting sympathy to the central figure has coloured the portrait. Not many, if any, huskies compel sympathy, or need it. The villainous dog, and the bullying dog, are far more true to the type than the hero dog. There may be a few of the latter, but men with a life-long knowledge of huskies agree that, however gentle and amenable occasional dogs may appear, they are never really to be relied on, as they seem incapable of losing the innate savagery and treachery which comes to them through their wolf ancestry.

A census of the dogs has never, and probably never will be, taken in Labrador, but the numbers can hardly be computed at less than 5,000 on the Eastern Coast alone. Every settler and every Eskimo has his team more or less numerous—a good team ranges from 9 to 12 dogs—these, with their due proportion of pups, half-grown dogs and so forth, amount to a large total. So that it is possible in winter to travel from Fort Chimo, in Ungava Bay, and following the coast of Labrador, to reach Battle Harbour by stages, picking up a new team and driver every 30 or 50 miles. It may be said that the worldly position of a settler can, up to a certain point, be gauged by the number and condition of his dogs.

Probably the reason why the more well-to-do do not greatly increase their packs is due to the difficulty of finding food for the animals in summer, when the husky dogs do not work, and are consequently, by the Eskimo at any rate, not much regarded. Indeed, at that season, many of the poorer people leave their dogs to find their own subsistence as best they may. The result of this policy is, that the dogs raid the trout nets at low water and steal all they find, often damaging the nets badly. When the caplin visit the coast they catch them on the tide-edge; at other times they range far and wide inland. The writer has seen them hunting deep in the interior.

[Illustration: The Labrador “Sinbad.”

No specimen of these magnificent dogs now exists in Northern Labrador.]

Still, game is scarce, and it would be idle to deny that in summer the lot of the husky is a hard one. Few seals are killed in the warm months, and the most the average dog can expect is, that his master may throw him some fish-offal, sculpin, or, as the Eskimo call them, _kanayuk_, and rock cod, these last not being accounted man-food in the fishing season.

Even in Nain, where boats are continually coming and going to and from the fishing grounds and the dogs consequently pick up a certain amount of food, an instance occurred this year showing the extraordinary summer hunger of the dogs. A large sleeper shark was caught by its tail in one of the trout nets, killed, and hauled on the beach. In an instant about a hundred huskies—all the Nain dogs which were not away with their owners at the fishing stations—had galloped down and sat round with streaming jaws, while a settler and a young Eskimo carefully took out the shark’s liver, which consists of two long light yellow lobes, and yields oil of a good quality. When the men left the carcass the dogs gathered closer to the shark in great excitement, but, with the exception of a couple of young puppies that licked up the blood, they sniffed at it gingerly, and most of them went off without attempting to eat it. As a matter of fact the dogs, though they appear to relish the hard spines of the sculpin, will only eat shark’s flesh when driven desperate by hunger. In this case, as soon as the big and better-fed dogs lost interest, the off-scourings belonging to the poorer Eskimo came down, and by afternoon, after much howling, bickering, and rending, nothing was left of the carcass but the tail.

It is not too much to say that during the whole summer the majority of the dogs are hungry and in a sense outcast. They drowse in the hot sun through the July and August days, haunted and tortured by mosquitoes and flies of various kinds; when not away hunting, they hang about the wharves and sight the incoming boats even before their masters. The advent of such is the signal for a general assembly; the bigger huskies walk gravely and delicately, as their manner is, to the landing steps, and the gaunt, rough, and often frowsy individuals, hustle together behind, in the hope, usually unfulfilled, that the incoming boat may carry something unfit for human consumption, but welcome as dog-provender.

This trick of meeting boats is an awkward one for the stranger who, making some lonely landing after dark, finds himself confronted by some score of huskies, whose neutrality is never quite to be depended upon.

The settlers usually take their teams to their summer fishing, as do many of the Eskimo, and it is no unusual thing to see a boatload returning for a day or two to the settlement for stores, bringing their dogs with them. Huskies at a fishing camp are generally well-fed, and consequently look sleek, clean, and handsome.

Such then is the existence of the husky in summer; but when the winter snow falls he enters into his kingdom. Then, apart from the snow shoe, the _komatik_, or dog-sledge, is the only means of travel and communication. Then he is fed and looked after and rendered fit to fill his niche in the economy of the Labrador. And it must be put to his credit that the Eskimo dog, whatever his faults, loves his work. When the _komatik_ is first drawn from its summer resting place, the huskies bark and leap, half beside themselves with joy. They will toil and die in their traces. From Nain, the settlers often drive out thirty miles through the vast barrier of islands, to the _sina_, the ice-edge of the open sea, to fish or catch seals for the day, returning the same night. Nor is this distance considered any undue strain upon the team.

There are regular _komatik_ routes leading from the coast inland all up the Labrador, which are used by the hunting parties; others lead from bay to bay. The annual winter mail, which reaches Nain about Christmas, sometimes follows these, but much of this great north road leads over the sea-ice, which presents a better surface for travelling. On a clear, still winter’s day, no scene more eloquent of the north can be imagined, than the dark moving blots and the humped sledgeload behind them, which, as they approach over the white world, resolve themselves into eight huskies full of the joy of life, and behind them the wind-blackened face and sleepy eyes of the Eskimo driver, who, with his short handled whip, lashed with thirty feet of hide, can, not only touch any dog he pleases, but can flick a fly, drive in a nail, or kill a willow-grouse with a turn of his wrist.

As to distances which husky teams travel, they can continuously draw a light load each day for forty or fifty miles for a week on end. The driver controls the dogs by voice, backed by fear of his whip. If they should break away, as they do sometimes on the scent of game, he is likely to have an awkward time of it. As this is the case, it can readily be imagined how much depends on the character of the leader of the team. A good and steady leader is of immense value. He must start at the cry of “Huit!” stop when his driver shouts “Ah!” turn to the right at “Ra, ra, ra!” and to the left at “Auk, auk, auk!” Added to all this is the qualification on which fiction has laid so much stress, that the leader, when a male, must be able to lord it over his team, fight any member of it to a finish, and keep order generally.

Curiously enough, in every team besides a leader there is also a scapegoat. This unhappy animal—often an ex-leader, who at the fangs of a younger, lustier brute has learned the bitter lesson of life that “youth will be served”—is set upon by his team-mates at all times and seasons. So terribly are such dogs punished that they often have to be destroyed.

The record journey of which I have knowledge in north central Labrador was that made by the Rev. Bishop Martin from Nain to Okak on a matter of urgency. Starting from Nain at seven in the morning with the team of Mission dogs driven by an Eskimo, he reached Okak the same night, having covered by the route he took something over 100 miles. Mr. Kristian Schmitt of the Mission has also made several fine journeys.

When women are travelling, a strong oblong box of wood is lashed on the _komatik_, and over this a frame covered with sail cloth can be placed at night or in bad weather. But an annoying and somewhat dangerous incident is occasionally experienced by the occupants of the “women’s box,” and this is when the team sight or scent a deer or a fox. If not immediately and cleverly headed off, the dogs stampede at once in pursuit, and the unlucky women and children are bumped along mercilessly or overthrown. Sometimes the dogs break their traces and disappear for hours or for days. Should such a happening occur when the _komatik_ is being driven through a wooded district, the chances of a mishap are much increased, as the dogs with their long traces running on different sides of the trees, are certain to bring the sledge in contact with one of them, a result more than likely to end in a dangerous or even fatal accident. Indeed, thick wood tests the good qualities of a driver, and the whip who can “hold ’em and hit ’em” in fairly thick timber has no further height of skill to climb.

The pace of the team is of course regulated by the smoothness of the surface, and good travelling is more commonly to be met with on the sea-ice or the high barrens. When in spring the Eskimo pass away inland on their annual deer-hunt, long distances are covered each day. The Nain Eskimo make their first camp at Poungassé, fifty miles from the settlement. Here it is necessary to haul dogs, sledges, and outfit up a steep rift to the higher level of the interior. After that there is good going over the snow for a great distance to the south-west. As far as I could gather from talking with the hunters, they have in some years when unable to find the deer, slept five or six times before turning back. This would take them some 200 miles in a south-westerly direction, and it was doubtless upon such a journey that they saw the “great water, greater than any with which we Eskimo are acquainted,” and which was possibly Lake Michimakats or Michikamau.

In past days the Eskimo on their caribou-hunts used to push forward looking for the deer until the dog-food was exhausted; when that came to an end and they had so far failed to fall in with the herds, they ate the dogs and afterwards starved to death if they still could not kill game. This year-to-year history of the annual hunt, with its persistent tragedies, now only lives in tradition. The east coast hunting parties of recent times run little risk, as when the dog-food is half done they turn home again. It is no longer necessary to gamble with their lives in the finding of the deer, upon which formerly much of their winter provision depended, for now they have the Moravian Missions to apply to, and they know very well that they will not be allowed to starve.

The food most prized for the dogs, and that on which they appear to work best, is seal meat. Caplin, the small fish which is the favourite food of the cod, and which appears in vast shoals off the coast in most seasons, comes next. Whale meat is also used, but when none of these can be obtained a coarse paste of oatmeal is carried.

Accidents while travelling on _komatik_ occasionally occur. A year or two ago, late in the evening, a settler drove over a cliff and was dashed to pieces on the ice below. Interspersed with such tragedies are wonderful escapes such as come to pass in all countries where the snow drifts, for a deep drift makes soft falling. For the most part, however, the huskies are not to be forced to advance over bad or unsafe footing, and many a driver owes his life to their instinct.

The price of a full-grown sledge-dog is from two dollars upwards, and as the spring always sees a large increase in their numbers, a puppy’s price at that time of year is often nominal in the settlements, though in the outlying bays the demand may exceed the supply with the usual results. Even dead puppies are of value, for their soft fur is used for edging slippers.

The litters run to seven or eight in number as a rule, and interbreeding with the wild wolves is by no means unknown. The result of the cross is not markedly more savage than the pure-bred husky, which, after all, is practically a domesticated wolf. The Eskimo prize a black dog above any other, and black puppies are never killed. The reason is truly characteristic of this essentially utilitarian race, the skin of a black dog whenever he dies is in some demand among the Eskimo dandies for trimming the pointed hoods of the blanket or sealskin dickies or _attacheks_.

The early life of a puppy is generally a bitter experience. The chances are about one in ten that he will be eaten by some big and hungry husky, and even when this danger is over, and until he attains to something of the strength of maturity, he will be driven from his food or comfortable lying-place by full-grown dogs. It is a case of survival of the fittest, and if a dog be knocked down in a struggle for food or in a fight, the other dogs in the pack at once spring upon him and only by human agency can he be saved from the stomachs of his friends. The human agency usually takes the form of an Eskimo woman or boy, who rushes down with a pole or a volley of well-aimed stones in the attempt to scatter the combatants. At any hour of the day or night the sounds of a dog-fight will bring the inmates of a Labrador dwelling tumbling out of doors—to hesitate but for a matter of seconds may mean the death of a valuable dog.

It is practically impossible to keep a domestic animal of any kind on the Labrador on account of the predatory husky. There are, it is true, a few horses at Hamilton Inlet which so far have escaped, but further north they would probably have been killed. Attempts have been made to keep sheep and goats in some of the Moravian settlements, but they were penned inside high palisades. The few fowls on the coast, however carefully guarded, suffer a constant diminution in numbers. But at Makkovik a cat of remarkable character has lived for ten years, “in the midst of alarms,” and daily, almost hourly, owes her survival to the agility with which she takes to the spruce trees that surround the station.

The huskies show marvellous ingenuity and perform no less marvellous feats in order to kill. At Nain they leaped a stockade seven feet high to get at a tame deer, and when leaping is made impossible to them, they often gnaw their way through wooden walls. They are very cunning, as for example a dog, finding a _cache_ of meat raised on a scaffold out of reach of leap, and supported by poles thinner than ordinary, chewed away their bases and so secured the meat. The pack also are always aware when a house is empty at the stations, and not unseldom have made their way in during church-time. Once inside, they wreck everything, tearing even the carpets or rugs to pieces, and I should be sorry if they found a baby there; but Labrador babies begin regular church attendance at very tender ages.

Puppies that are played with and handled by the children always turn out better dogs, but no matter how long or carefully a husky is trained, he never becomes trustworthy, as, after years of apparent gentleness, he may break out into savagery. Mr. Payne, recently of the Hopedale Moravian settlement, has, I think, gone furthest in the experiment of reclamation. He has taught a pure-bred husky to trust, beg, and perform other tricks, yet this dog, given temptation, will always go the way of her kind. There would appear to be some quality in the husky that defies all efforts to bring him anywhere near the standard of faithfulness which we associate with the friend of man. It cannot be doubted that a few masters are brutal in the use of the whip, but as a rule, and in fact almost in every case, the owners of dogs treat them wisely and justly. On the lowest ground it is policy to do so, for the obedience of teams is built upon a clear and strictly enforced justice, a scheme of well-understood punishment and reward.

The husky is then, in the winter, master of Labrador. As more fortunate lands depend upon railways, so the northern people depend upon him; without his aid life could not at present continue. Over leagues of snow and ice he hauls in all man’s allies against the cold to his doors; seals from the _sina_, the ice-edge, fuel from the woods perhaps fifty miles away, the carcases of deer from the interior. Without him much of this provision would have to be foregone and many would starve. Add to this that he is extraordinarily healthy and enduring, sleeping out in all weathers, from soaking wet to Arctic cold, that he is perfectly sure-footed, and that he obviously rejoices in his toil in the traces, taking his long days cheerfully, even when at a pinch he travels seventy miles between rest and rest. He is a good servant if not much of a companion to his master.

But now to turn to the darker side of the picture, which will explain why a man sometimes feels the desire stir in him to go out and destroy every husky he can lay hands on. At the opening of this chapter I dwelt on the hopeless treachery of the breed. He is as treacherous as a leopard or a tiger, small germ of the loyal dog-nature appears to exist in him, training and gentling, however prolonged, do not affect the untrustworthiness that is the bed-rock of his nature, and which he derives from his wolf-blood. This fault in conjunction with the great hunger he often suffers, has led him to commit crimes which it is just possible may yet bring about his extinction by club and bullet over all Labrador.

The most terrible count against the dog packs is the fact that human life has been taken by them when emboldened by the chance fall or weakness of their victim the huskies have been tempted to attack. I will give such instances as came directly under the knowledge of the missionaries of Hopedale and Nain.

An Eskimo woman at Hopedale some few years ago took her baby in a perambulator—a box on wheels—and left it at the door of a friend’s house while she went in to chat for a few moments. When she came back she found the infant hanging out of the box, mauled about the head and upper part of the body by the dogs. She snatched up the poor little creature in her arms and ran to the Mission House (as all the Eskimo do in the moment of trouble), but the infant was, of course, quite dead. They suppose the child hung its arm over the side of its cart and the dogs could not resist the temptation of a meal.

Another instance. Three children—a boy and two girls—were berry-picking in the woods close to Nain, when some dogs came round them. One of them, a girl of eight, became terrified, and began to scream. The boy would have beaten off the dogs, for they are readily cowed by any show of boldness, but the second girl held him and dragged him away. The frightened child was pulled down, killed, and partly eaten. A little white, wooden cross stands to-day on the spot where the remains were found.

But now I will relate one of the most extraordinary and daunting stories of which I have knowledge.

On an island in a bay some miles north of Hopedale—the second most southerly mission station—there lived an old man. He was known to me personally, for one day, in 1903, when travelling up Jack’s Brook, I came upon him setting a bear-trap. I wrote of him at the time: “A white, forked beard swept his breast, and as we came nearer, we saw he was clad from head to foot in sealskins. On our return, when we mentioned meeting him, we heard that having taken a bear in a trap earlier in the season, the old man, finding himself without a gun, had gone steadily to work and stoned the bear to death.”

Four winters ago, this old man—he was between seventy and eighty—started from his home by _komatik_, or dog-sledge, to attend the Christmas church festival at Hopedale. He was accompanied by his wife, whom he had recently married, and by one of his grandchildren. The trail to Hopedale—a trail only used at rare intervals by three families—leads over a pass, and for this pass “Old Man Lane,” for such was the name he went by, set out. He had not started very long before a tremendous snowstorm swept down over the land and forced him to change his course. Some days later another settler, who lived in the same Bay (Jack Lane’s), started for Hopedale, and was surprised on arrival there to find that Old Man Lane had not put in an appearance. Nor was his fate and that of those with him discovered until the dogs of his team returned to his home on the Island in the bay about a fortnight later. The brutes looked so sleek and fat that the worst was at once suspected, and a couple were shot. The fact that at a post-mortem examination, human hair was found in the stomachs of these dogs proved their guilt, and the entire team was, of course, destroyed. All that really occurred in the storm and darkness of that December night must remain for ever uncertain, but from discoveries made in the following spring, the probable course of events can be pieced together with accuracy.

Overtaken by the driving snow the old man had wandered from the trail, finally reaching a deserted cabin. Here he arranged for his wife and grandchild to pass the night inside the palisade, while he himself, it appeared, had gone out to lie among his dogs. Even at home it was nothing unusual for him to do this, since he took a great pride in his team and often slept among them, in spite of all remonstrance.

During the night he either was killed by his dogs, or, as is just possible, died from exposure. At any rate, alive or dead, the dogs devoured their master. Inside the palisade, their attitudes preserved through months of snow and frost, his wife and grandchild were found, the boy kneeling at the knees of the woman inside the box of the sledge.

At Savage Bay, in the summer of 1910, a boy of five was killed and partly eaten just outside his father’s door by the huskies. This case I give on the authority of Dr. Grenfell. I could, indeed, multiply instances—such as the case of the attack on the H.B. Co.’s factor’s daughter, at Cartwright—but the details are painful and no good purpose would be served. It is, of course, true that such incidents are comparatively rare, but every now and again one of these dreadful occurrences takes place, though in five cases out of six the dogs are beaten off before much harm is done. In no spot out-of-doors is a young child _absolutely_ safe. One of Bishop Martin’s sons, a boy of three, was attacked on the very threshold of the Mission house. An Eskimo came to the rescue and drove off the brutes, but the shock to the child’s nerves was such that he never really recovered it, and he died a year later.

It is, however, not quite fair to lay all the blame for these disastrous happenings upon the dogs alone; their masters must be apportioned their full share of it, for it is only too true that the less prosperous and reliable settlers and Eskimo allow their animals to become so emaciated as to be a scandal—it is a sad sight to see the poor brutes with eyes preternaturally bright, their bodies mere fur and bone, enduring all the tortures of hunger for weeks on end. Indeed the huskies are sinned against as well as sinning. On the other hand even those owners of teams who feed their dogs well and adequately go in fear of them at certain times. I vividly remember one night in 1903—I was new to the country then—I was at the house of a settler, when it was discovered, about ten o’clock at night, that the washing had been left out on the bushes. Neither the settler nor his son seemed inclined to fetch it, so, because I wanted a clean shirt for the morrow, I undertook to do so. As I walked to the bushes, which were about 200 yards away, I was convoyed by the whole pack. Their attitude was certainly inimical and I was glad to pick up a branch by way of a weapon, and still more so when the washing and I were once more safe in the cabin.

The chief reasons why the huskies are occasionally dangerous—as they undoubtedly are—lies in the fact that, true to their wolf ancestry, they attack in packs. Though not so large as a wolf, they are strongly built and very powerful, and as they stand some 2½ feet or more at the shoulder, and weigh from 80 to 100 lbs., a single husky would prove a formidable antagonist easily capable of killing an unarmed man; but when a pack combine to attack, literally a few seconds suffices to rip away the life and to devour the body of the victim. Personally speaking, I would far rather face any single living animal than I would a pack of huskies, provided they really meant business.

And the huskies are ready to attack at any time, except when they are tired. All they wait for is a leader, so that the danger lies in the temperament and mood of the boldest or the most savage dog. Let him lead and the rest will inevitably back him. An attack is generally opened by the dog or dogs leaping and bounding playfully round. The moment they begin this game, it is wise to go at them with a big stick or a stone, for they will not face a determined attitude. But young children cannot do this, and from time to time, as long as the husky continues to lord it in Labrador, the settlements or the lonely bays will occasionally be the scenes of these horrible events.

Some few years ago it appeared hardly possible that the husky could ever be dispensed with and pass away from the Labrador. I remember in 1903, after hearing a peculiarly harrowing account of an attack upon a little girl, which had taken place that year, asking if there was no possible substitute for the dogs. “Only us,” said the settler, conclusively. But since then a presage of change has come. Dr. Grenfell, impelled by the example of the U.S. Government in Alaska, purchased a herd of reindeer from Norway. He brought over Lapp herdsmen to St. Anthony, on the Newfoundland coast, and in due time he hopes to introduce them into Labrador.

In the points of haulage and endurance of fatigue, it is extremely improbable that the deer can ever equal the husky, but, on the other hand, the deer can find food everywhere on the tundras and barrens, where uncounted square miles of caribou moss flourishes, whereas provision for a husky team means a very serious addition to the amount of weight to be carried on the sledges. Also the deer give excellent milk and would form a supply of fresh meat on a coast where tinned provisions of all kinds make up the staple diet. How wholesome and welcome such a change would be needs no argument.

It may be then that some day even the conservative Labrador will grasp the possibilities of Dr. Grenfell’s scheme, which indeed goes much further than I have here space to indicate, but before they can adopt it or keep tame deer the dogs must change their habits or be exterminated. The next few years will be a time of probation, and if the reindeer realise expectations, the huskies may be in part superseded, and with the diminution of their numbers and the better control of those which remain there may pass from the land the shadow of a fear which to-day causes many a father and mother to pray:

“Deliver my soul from the sword and my darling from the power of the dog.”