Yet transport became just as easy as in the summertime, though perhaps a trifle more fatiguing.

Men and women put on snowshoes shaped like tennis rackets, and flew over the hard snow quicker than a canoe could travel, dragging after them small sledges on which their luggage was packed; or, if they had not much luggage, carrying it slung round the shoulders and scurrying away on their snowshoes even swifter for the weight they carried; or they travelled over the smooth ice of the rivers and lakes.
Winter travellers, however, were sometimes troubled with a disorder known as the snowshoe evil.

This arose from the placing of an unusual strain on the tendons of the leg, occasioned by the weight of the snowshoe.

It often resulted in severe inflammation of the lower leg.
The local remedy was a drastic one: it was to place a piece of lighted touchwood on the most inflamed part, and to leave it there till the flesh was burnt to the nerve! In the north and the regions round Hudson's Bay, and also in the far west--British Columbia and Alaska--there were dogs, more or less of the Eskimo breed, trained by Eskimo or by Amerindians to drag the sledges.

In the months of December and January it is true that the daylight in Arctic Canada (north of Lake Athapaska) became so short that the sun at its greatest altitude only appeared for two or three hours a short distance above the horizon.