. Adventures of two youths in the open Polar Sea. just large enough to carry one person with a little baggage. The TRAVELLING WITH DOG-SLEDGES. 75 driver sits with bis feet hanging over the side, and clings to a bow thatrises in front. In one hand he holds an iron-pointed staff called an ostoll,which he uses as a brake to retard the sledge while descending hills, or tobring it to a halt. If yon drop the ostoll the dogs know it as quickly asyou do, and take the opportunity to run away or upset the sledge, andeven the leader is apt to join in the sport. The freight sledge is much heavier than th
. Adventures of two youths in the open Polar Sea. just large enough to carry one person with a little baggage. The TRAVELLING WITH DOG-SLEDGES. 75 driver sits with bis feet hanging over the side, and clings to a bow thatrises in front. In one hand he holds an iron-pointed staff called an ostoll,which he uses as a brake to retard the sledge while descending hills, or tobring it to a halt. If yon drop the ostoll the dogs know it as quickly asyou do, and take the opportunity to run away or upset the sledge, andeven the leader is apt to join in the sport. The freight sledge is much heavier than the other, and sometimesas many as twenty-one dogs are harnessed to it. The team for a freightsledge is not trained to high speed like the travelling team, and it is neverwell to allow your travelling dogs to be used for freighting purposes, as itis very hard to get them to run rapidly when they have once practised aslower gait. An ordinary team for travelling is five dogs—two pairs andjl leader—but very often we use only three dogs in a GETTING READY FOR THE ROAD. Fred asked how fast the dogs could travel, and what distances theyusually made in a day. That depends on the length of the journey and the condition of thesnow, was the reply. For a week or ten days we are satisfied withforty or fifty miles a day, if the snow is good, and for two or three daystravel under the same conditions we make fifty or sixty miles daily. Ihave gone a hundred miles in little more than a day with a single team,and once a team travelled from Bolcheretsk to Petropavlovsk—a hundredand twenty-five miles—in twenty-three hours. It made three or four haltsof not more than fifteen minutes each time. The snow was excellent, andthe dogs were in the very best condition, while the driver was a small man 76 THE VOYAGE OF THE VIVIAN. and had no baggage of any kind. He was a messenger bringing news ofthe declaration of the Crimean War. We dont use the dogs for sledging in summer, as I told yon befo
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