He had helped to take the United States Mail to remote and
inaccessible districts, and had sped with the Doctor and Priest to the
bedside of the sick or dying in distant, lonely cabins.
He and his kind have ever shared the toil of the development of that
desolate country that stretches from the ice-bound Arctic to where the
gray and sullen waters of Bering Sea break on a bleak and wind-swept
shore. They figure but little in the forest-crowned Alaska of the
South, with its enchanted isles, emerald green, in the sunlit, silver
waves; but they are an indispensable factor in the very struggle for
mere existence up beyond the chain of rugged Aleutians whose towering
volcanoes are ever enveloped in a sinister shroud of smoke. Up in the
eternal snows of the Alaska of the North, the unknown Alaska--the Alaska
of Men and Dogs.
[Illustration: THE ALASKA OF MEN AND DOGS June 1--The
steamer Corwin at the edge of the ice, five miles from shore]
And so it is not strange that in such a land where the dog has ever
played well his role of support to those who have faced its dangers and
conquered its terrors, that his importance should be at last freely
acknowledged, and the fact admitted that only the best possible dogs
should be used for all arduous tasks.
Toward this end the Nome Kennel Club was organized. The object was not
alone the improvement of the breeds used so extensively, but also, since
the first President was a Kentuckian, of equal importance was the
furnishing of a wholesome and characteristic sport for the community.
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