"Mush"

The snow fell in the morning, drifting over the roads. The wind lifted scarves of snow, twisting them quickly about invisible dancers in the white woods. Steep, shining lawns slanted under the trees, marked by the light feet of birds, brushed by the tails of foxes, punctuated strangely by the furry paws of rabbits. The cold whisper of winter, the soft voice of disaster through beauty, sounded in the forest.

Seppalla, resting one knee on his sled and using his right leg to push with, drove his team along the white miles. His little Siberian dogs plunged hopelessly in their harness, jerking against leather, grooving the deep drifts with their bellies. Remembering again the drifting ice across Norton Bay, Leonard Seppalla cracked his whip and called the curious signal to go ahead which made his leader duck and scuttle, guessing the trail with his feet.

No roads lead to Nome, only the dazzling desert of the snow. But last week, Leonard Seppalla was not driving Scotty to a fever-stricken town near the Bering Strait with a cargo of serum strapped to his skidding sled. He was driving a team through the Adirondack woods, near Lake Placid, in the second Annual Lake Placid Sled Dog Derby, which he won with a total elapsed time of two hours and 32 minutes for the two 15-mile laps of the run. Later the most famous of dog team drivers banqueted in the Lake Placid Club with his ten less successful competitors.

Among them was Walter Channing of Boston, Chairman of the Racing Committee of the New England Sled Dog Club, who beat Seppalla's time on the second day's run but lost to him on the average of the two days' time, because his harness had broken on the first lap. Hiram Mason was third. He was driving for the Taylor-Mason kennels at Tamworth, N. H., of which the other member is Mosely Taylor, President of the New England Sled Dog Club, an amateur who since 1921 has helped finance races. Fourth was Mrs. E. P. Ricker, of Poland Spring, Me., who had to break trail on the second day.

Dog racing is a necessity, not a sport, in Polar regions or across the drifting ice of Norton Sound in Alaska where Seppalla became famous for his five and a half day mush to Nome in 1925 with diphtheria serum, beating the record run for 655 miles by three and a half days. Balto, whom Gunnar Kasson drove on the race to Nome, also dragged Roald Amundsen north when he planned his polar flight.

In the U. S., especially in New England and the Northwest, dog-racing is becoming popular like all other winter sports. Last week Edward P. Clark won the 220-mile Berlin to Boston race, which stopped at Lowell, Mass., when a thaw spoiled the snow on the road to Boston. At the March winter carnival in The Pas, Man., will be revived the derby from The Pas to Flin Flo and back, with a $2,000 first prize and Emil St. Goddard, present world's champion, an entrant.