One of the principal sports of the Far North is dog-racing. The annual All-Alaska Dog Race is the classic sporting event of King Frost's dominions. A 412-mile run over snow and ice. from Nome to Candle and return, calls for phenomenal endurance. Usually it is a contest between the Alaskan malamutes and the Siberian wolf-dogs, and the rivalry is as keen as that displayed in a baseball world's series. Four years out of seven the sweepstakes went to the Siberian wolf-dogs. In a recent year one of these teams made the round-trip in 80 hours and 27 minutes.

The Red River International Derby is another race that tries the mettle of the dogs of the North. This race is run over the Pembina trail, from Winnipeg to St. Paul. It is a straightaway course nearly 500 miles long. When Albert Campbell, the Cree Indian, drove his team of six dogs across the finish line at St. Paul, making the 522 miles in 118 hours and 16 seconds, he won the longest dog-race ever held and set a Marathon mark that will be hard to lower.

One of the most famous dogs of modern times was a St. Bernard - Barry. Among the 40 lives saved by him was a child found in the snow and overcome with the drowsiness which precedes death by freezing. The dog restored the child to consciousness by licking its face; then crouched in the snow so that the little sufferer might climb upon him and be carried to the monastery on dogback. Over Barry's grave is the inscription: "Barry, the heroic. Saved 40 persons and was killed by the 41st." The tragedy was due to an unfortunate mistake, a lost traveler thinking that his dog rescuer was about to attack him.

The dogs of the Far North are devoted to their masters, but the eternal cold and the unbroken solitude of the lonely places within the Circle often make the divotion mutual. When Lieut. George F. Waugh, of the United States Army, was making that lonely trip from the Canadian frontier to the Bering Sea coast, the story of which is told in his "Alone Across Alaska," he met a man carrying five small puppies. He was three days making twelve miles, two of them without a bit of food. He had frozen his feet and hands, but the puppies had to be cared for, whatever the odds.

Merely Because There Are No Horses, Jockeys, Or Race Tracks In Alaska Is No Reason Why Nome Should Not Have Its Races.

Photograph by Lomen Brothers, from Capt. Thomas A. Ross.

In no other part of the world is the rivalry keener than between owner-driven teams of sled dogs in the far north. Women not infrequently enter the lists, as shown in this picture (see text, page 87).

Another striking case of devotion to one's dog is related of Captain Robert Bartlett. now planning an aerial expedition to the North Pole. He was in command of the Karluk when the ship was caught in drift ice and carried helplessly on to her doom and away from Stef-ansson. whose expedition she was carrying. After the brave old craft at last surrendered to the shearing process of the ice and had gone down with her talking-machine playing the funeral march, it became Captain Bartlett's duty to bring relief to the members of the ice-stranded party. So he first saw them to reasonable safety on a lonely island, and then, with his dogs and one Eskimo, set out for civilization again. En route, his leading dog, in trying to jump an ice-lane, fell into the water. He was quickly rescued, but the sea-water on his hair almost immediately became ice. To save the dog from freezing, the two men successfully chewed the ice out of their four-footed ally's coat.

Dogs Of The North.

© Lomen Brothers.

It was upon such teams of valiant animals as these that Peary relied in his dash to the North Pole. The Eskimo dog has played a notable par in Arctic and Antarctic explorations under many flags. During the world war a team of sled dogs was awarded the Croix de Guerre for saving a French outpost in the snow-covered Alps (see page 77).

The best friends of the dog are the most earnest advocates of legislation against the renegade of his race - the sheep-killing mongrel. And when a pedigreed dog runs amuck he is even worse than his nondescript fellow-sinner.