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Appendix 265

Index 271

A Woman of the Fox Channel Tribe Frontispiece PAGE An Ancient Aboriginal Encampment 40 Part of an Eskimo Tribe of Women and Children 56 An Iglovegak or Eskimo Dwelling 64 An Eskimo Tupik 73 An Eskimo Snowhouse 76 An Eskimo Home 80 The Return of the Successful Seal Hunter in Springtime 88 Young Seal Hunting in May 92 Two Women in Summer Dress 96 A Young Wife with her Baby in her Hood 104 Eskimo Family Group 104 Models of Kayak, Umiak, and Okushuk 112 An Ancient Form of Sled 134 The Two Wives of a Hunter 144 An Eskimo Family outside their House 144 Preparing for a Long Winter Journey 160 A Native Chart 177 Asseak and his Wife 200 An Umiak or Family Boat 208 The Summer Tent or Tapik 208 A Conjuror's Mask 211 A Kagge or Singing House 218 A Kagge or Singing House 219 An Eskimo Woman of the Fox Channel Tribe 224 An Eskimo Summer Encampment 224 Specimens of Native Stone Carving 232 An Eskimo in his Kayak 240 Beginning to Build a Snowhouse 240 A Wolf Trap 255 An Eskimo Trap for Bears, Foxes or Wolves 257 A Seagull Trap 261

THE ESKIMO OF BAFFIN LAND

THE VOYAGE TO THE ARCTICS

A voyage to the Arctics has always been a dangerous and exciting adventure, whether entered upon by whalers and hunters, intrepid men lured by the hardy business of the frozen North, or by the no less intrepid pioneers of exploration and of science. For the moment, we are not concerned with the latter, but rather with some aspects of life in the barren lands and icy seas north of "the Circle," and with the adventures and experiences of the few ships' crews who have been making yearly voyages in those regions for trading purposes ever since the efforts of the sixteenth century navigators to discover the famous North West Passage began to chart out these hitherto unnavigated seas.

Centuries before this, however, the Arctic Ocean was entered by a Norwegian adventurer about the time of King Alfred; and the west coast of Greenland was colonised from Iceland early in the eleventh century. But no further progress was made in arctic discovery until the sixteenth century, when various seas and points of land were mapped out, mainly in the eastern hemisphere. The navigator Henry Hudson discovered the Straits and Bay named after him in the great North American archipelago, in 1610. Frobisher, Drake, and Hall, made voyages to the west coasts of Greenland and to the opposite coasts; but the entrance to the arctic regions west of that continent was discovered by John Davis in 1585. In 1616, Baffin and Bylot passed through this passage and sailed up Smith Sound, but nothing further was learned of these parts for another two hundred years.

The Eskimo preserve to this day the story of Frobisher. It was, indeed, narrated to the writer with a wealth of authentic detail by a native, to whom it had been handed down amid other oral traditions of his tribe and locality.

"Now it is said that Frobisher, coming to Nauyatlik for the first time, not knowing the place or where there was a safe anchorage, crept along the side in his small ship, and was wrecked. For it was shallow water there, and getting aground, he ordered the fuel to be taken out and carried ashore to a place called Akkelasak. For the ship was no longer habitable. The crew found refuge on a small, flat island, and pitched tents there of the vessel's sails, and began to fashion a graving dock by digging out the soft ground. When it was finished, they towed the wreck to the spot and docked her. All this happened a long time ago, but traces of their work are still visible. The shipwrecked sailors overhauled the hull. When at length their repairs and rebuilding were complete, they towed out the ship and moored her alongside a cliff, at the top of which they fixed their tackle, unstepped and restepped the mast, their task being completed. At last, and having buried those of their shipmates who had died during this weary time, they abandoned the remainder of their fuel and set sail for home. This is the narrative of one who had it from her mother, who in turn had received it from her dead father, who had it from his forbears; for thus they were accustomed to narrate it."

The above translation, of course, is very free. It would interest the philologist to have it in the original, or even in a literal version; but possibly the foregoing will convey to the general reader that graphic grasp of the story which renders all Eskimo history so reliable and enduring.

The attempt to find a north west passage by sea, from the Atlantic Ocean to Behring Strait, where farthest east meets farthest west, was abandoned until Commander John Ross, in modern times , was sent out to prosecute further exploration in the Arctic. Throughout the nineteenth century, many intrepid voyages were made, with which the names of such men as Parry, Ross, Richardson, Rae and Franklin are associated. Prior to this wonderful epoch of dauntless adventure, all within the Arctic Circle upon the map was a blank. The entire geography of the Canadian arctic archipelago has been worked out, defined, charted, and named, since that time. Voyages of discovery were made in rapid succession, after Sir John Ross's expedition in 1818, many of the leaders working in conjunction with the officials of the Hudson Bay Fur Trading Company, who were anxious to determine the extent and limits of the immense continent they controlled, now known as the North West Territories. Every name upon the arctic map, whether of sea, sound, inlet, strait, island, peninsula or cape, is a historical association with the personnel or the patrons of these numerous expeditions.

All the islands of the Arctic Archipelago lying to the northward of the mainland of the continent, and the whole of Baffin Land, form part of the British possessions in North America by right of discovery. They were formally transferred to the Dominion of Canada by Order in Council of the Imperial Government on September 1st, 1880.

An immense amount of scientific information was derived from all this hardship, endurance and enterprise. The story of Sir John Franklin alone is a deathless epic in the annals of this seafaring nation. And the whole field was opened up for the whalers, sealers, hunters and fishers, whose business it soon became to demonstrate that arctic exploration had a bearing on commerce and the hardier industries of maritime mankind.

The whaling trade originated as early as the discoveries of Barentz and Hudson, but Sir John Ross opened up the northernmost waters of Baffin's Bay to it, in recent times. The search for the North West Passage, indeed, proved abortive for many years, owing to the fact that the season in which it was possible to navigate in very high latitudes only lasted about seven weeks. The most experienced men, though, never gave up the theory of the probability of its existence. Half a century went by before the route was found at last. Captain McClure, in the search for the long-lost Franklin, achieved the discovery of two routes to the Behring Straits and the Pacific Ocean, in the autumn of the year 1850. Useless and futile as the discovery proved to be, who can sufficiently estimate and appraise all that has gone, of human worth and high resolve, of suffering and of life itself, to the making of it?

Of the whalers and traders who followed in the wake of the explorers, the Scottish seamen have been the most persistent. Scotch vessels continue, to-day, to visit the Arctic every year. They sail from home in early summer, cross the North Atlantic, work their way up Davis' Strait, and, , return to Scotland late in "the fall." Sometimes the practice was to make the passage, generally through open water, from Dundee to St. John's, spend some weeks upon the sealing grounds, then return to refit at the Newfoundland port for a whaling cruise farther north in Lancaster Sound. Having secured their cargo of seal skins and oil, they return home. The vessels of the Dundee whaling fleet are designed and built for navigation in northern seas. The hull is of wood, on account of its resisting power where pressed by ice, and the hardwood sheathing minimises the abrasions caused by conflict with the jagged edges of the floes. The ship is immensely braced by stout cross beams inside. The cutwater is protected by iron bands or plates, to enable her to withstand the heavy strain of the ice. She is barque rigged , and fitted with steam, to enable her to proceed during a calm, to shear her way through ice, or to enter and leave harbour independently of wind or tide. On all other occasions she depends upon her sails. A whaler fitted after this fashion is called an "auxiliary steam vessel." She sails, however, much faster than she can steam. She carries about 500 tons of coal.

Many of these tried and tested Scottish whaling ships have been bought up by the leaders of Arctic and Antarctic exploring expeditions, and remodelled and refitted for the scientific uses to which they would be put, and have done yeoman service in the assault on the Poles.

Of late years the Hudson Bay Company , have established posts on the southern shores of Baffin Land, , so that their ships, which sail from Montreal as annual supply ships for all the Company's "Forts" and "Factories" along the Canadian coasts, have points of call along Hudson Strait en route for Hudson Bay itself and the fur ports of that vast inland sea.

The Scotch whaling industry has various agents posted in many a bleak, un-heard of spot along the icebound littoral of the Eskimo countries, whose duty it is to collect and store the pelts brought in by the natives--employed by the agent--and ship them away annually or bi-annually, as the case may be.

A whaling voyage was filled, especially in the earlier days, with as much danger as adventure. The ships were manned by sailors who had taken to the life as lads, or, held by the fascination of the North, returned thither year after year, seldom caring to make voyages elsewhere. They lived amid the ice. True northman and fine seaman, many a whaler's master is proud of the fact that he began his career as a cabin boy and worked his way aft. He is a fighter, every inch of him, such as only "the wild" can breed. He has an iron code of honour, and a strain of true Norse hardness in him for his enemy. But he has also the manly virtues of his type--fidelity to his fellows, and generosity to lesser men than himself.

Previous to an Arctic voyage, months were spent in the commissioning of these vessels. Every rope and block was overhauled. The ships' boats were rigorously tested and each carefully fitted out. Food and stores of all kinds were taken aboard wholesale, against every contingency experience and foresight could suggest, especially that of a forced wintering in the north. An armoury of weapons was carried: harpoons and harpoon guns for the boats, lances for killing whales, huge knives for cutting up the carcases, bombs, hatchets, rifles and ammunition. No less exhaustive was the inventory of the "trade"--articles for the Eskimo trade and barter--such as needles, soaps , pipes, matches, calico, beads, and, above all, tobacco! Every boy's book of adventure will suggest the scope of the slop chest, the incredible handiness and nattiness of the galley, the reek of the fo'c'sle, the snug dignity of the Captain's cabin, and the compressed completeness of an equipment designed to last a ships' entire crew over many months of toil, emergency, and utter isolation. She carried no doctor. The first mate presided over the medicine chest, and had resort to some small book of directions as to what to give and what to do in case of illness or accident. In the early days adventurers to the Arctic were sorely stricken with scurvy, for want of vegetable food and a knowledge of how to provide against this deficiency. We have often heard of desperate feats of amateur surgery carried out on board ship. It has been that the mate of a whaling vessel often acted, not at all unsuccessfully, as surgeon.

Doctor William S. Bruce, indeed, tells us in his "Polar Exploration" that, generally speaking, germ diseases are unknown in the Arctic, the intense cold making everywhere--in the air, on the sea and on the land--for a high degree of bacterial sterility. "Under ordinary conditions it is not possible to 'catch cold' in the polar regions .... infectious fevers are practically unknown, unless contracted in a dirty ship or filthily kept house." Hence the feasibility of a practical asepsis in accident or operation. Bishop Bompass once amputated a man's leg above the knee, and the operation was completely successful. The Bishop had no medical knowledge beyond having attended some lectures at an opthalmic hospital, in order to learn how to treat his Indians for snow-blindness.

The whaling voyage itself might be uneventful enough until a high latitude was reached; but after that, the greatest possible skill was required to navigate the ship safely through the "pack" ice coming down from the Pole through Davis Straits and Fox Channel, on its way to the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland, to be finally melted and dispersed in the Gulf Stream.

Arctic navigators and oceanographers enumerate many varieties and vagaries of the polar ice. Suffice it here to note that "pack ice" is the jammed and frozen conglomeration of masses of ice from broken floes and vast disintegrating "fields" of ice. In Straits, this pack is always heaviest in the centre but less compact along the shores, so that a vessel can sometimes be worked along the coast when navigation in the middle would be impossible. This "middle pack" is rightly dreaded by Arctic seamen. A change of wind might drift it in upon the shore, when the ship's destruction would be inevitable. The great danger in meeting the ice pack out at sea consists in the fact that the larger part of the floe is almost submerged and little of it is to be seen. Again, it bristles with spurs and points which stick up and out like spears and rams, any one of which might rip up a hull sailing at any speed.

The rapidity with which the ice pack moves is something wonderful. Miles upon miles of sea will be free from ice, with the exception of small masses from the floes, and the ship ploughs a steady course to the north. Suddenly the wind changes. Ice swiftly makes its appearance on every quarter, and--with incredible rapidity--the vessel is surrounded. But warning has been given from the "crow's nest" , and the Master works a cautious way through the "leads" in the shifting ice. Should the pack be exceptionally heavy, threatening to pen in the ship completely, measures for her safety are immediately taken. Orders ring out sharply. The crew, with ice saws or blasting powder, quickly make a space in the ice, like a temporary dock, large enough to warp her into, where she can lie snug while the savage floes grind and crash against each other without. Woe to the ship caught between them ere such a refuge can be made! No vessel that ever adventured in the polar seas could stand the awful grip. There would be a rending of the stoutest timbers, groans of a ship in agony, a lift and a quiver, and as the floes swung apart on the black swell below, the brave creature, mangled, rent, and stove in, would plunge to her bitter grave. As for her crew, their only chance would be to lower the boats, and, either marooned on the ice, drift south on the prevailing current until perchance sighted by a ship; or, if afloat, work their perilous way to the Greenland coast, and take refuge at one of the Danish settlements sparsely scattered on its southern extremity.

Icebergs--those rightly dreaded wanderers of the northern seas--afford a glorious vision in bright, calm weather, as they wend their majestic course to the south, tinted by the setting sun or by the indescribable loveliness of the northern sunrise. Sometimes a large portion having been melted, breaks from the berg, when the vast mass slowly careens over, plunges with a thunderous crash, and reasserts itself upon a new floating base, peerless and beautiful as ever. The ship is fortunate who finds herself standing well away at such a moment.

In spite, however, of their bad reputation, the bergs have their uses for those hardy wayfarers of the sea who know them. The ancient Arctic mariner will tell you that an iceberg can sail against the wind as well as with it! Gripped for two-thirds of its bulk by a strong under-current, it can crash its way and forge ahead against the wildest adverse gale. An old whaler told of an experience he had when his ship was beset by the loose floe, and like to be crushed to matchwood. The men were striving all they knew to get her into safety, when a vast berg drove slowly down beside her through the ice, shouldering it aside as a giant liner drives through a heavy sea. With the inspiration of sheer desperation, the Captain saw his chance! The vessel was cautiously worked still nearer the berg and then kedged on to it. Towed thus, with resistless might, she too forged safely through the chafing floe to clear water and deliverance.

Again, a ship--no matter of what class or tonnage--can only carry a certain quantity of water. So, too, with a whaler; she is limited in her supply. It sometimes happens that, cruising about week after week, she runs short of water. On sighting an iceberg, she sends off her boats loaded with casks, and the crews refill them either with water from the pools at the foot of the berg, or with the ice itself, which being fresh water ice, melts down, of course, into splendid drinking water after the brine and salt coating from the sea has first been scraped off. For, be it remembered, an iceberg is a portion--the seaward end--of one of the polar glaciers. As the immense ice river reaches the coast it is pushed out over the cliffs, and vast masses break off with terrific detonation, plunge into the sea, and the newly born icebergs go floating far and wide. A large number of these bergs are formed in Eternity Fiord on the Greenland coast, and the crash and roar of them can be heard for miles.

As the season wears on and the whaler's hold slowly fills with the cargo of the Arctic hunt, from time to time she puts into the sparse harbours of the northern coasts, to refit, or to meet the tribes of Eskimo gathered there to do "trade" with her. The Hudson Bay Company have lately introduced a form of coinage for this purpose, anything of the sort being previously quite unknown among the natives. Pieces of metal in various shapes represent the values of a currency and are used as money. But the prehistoric marketing of barter still holds good throughout the greater part of the Arctic regions.

Sometimes a shipmate has to be left, perforce of accident or illness, to sleep the long sleep that knows no earthly waking, in this drear and far-off land.

So much then for the voyage and the voyagers to the Arctic. Now for that frozen world itself, and for those strange people whose lot, compared with that of all the rest of the more genially situated sons of men, would seem to have fallen in the bleakest, harshest and most forbidding places, where human life might scarcely exist.

When the first ship seen by an Eskimo tribe touched on the coast, what did they think of it; what was the bewildering impression they got? An old hunter, recounting the story of his tribe and its adventures, gave the writer a graphic account of just such an event. An enormous boat, he said, appeared, filled with Kabloon?tyet , speaking an unknown tongue and having hairy faces! The tall masts were hung with the clouds , and there was a door in the roof , instead of in the side of the house. At first the tribesmen hovered round this amazing thing in their canoes, afraid to approach too near. Presents were thrown out to them of which they could make nothing. They just smelt at the tobacco, biscuit and sweets, and cast them aside. There were knives, but they cut themselves with these, not knowing how to handle steel ones. It was almost as if some unimaginable craft from another sphere were to visit the Earth and make incomprehensible overtures to us by means of objects which conveyed nothing to our intelligence--something after the style of Mr. Wells's Martians. At last, however, looking glasses resolved the situation. These the Eskimo received with huge delight and amazement. Eventually they were induced to board the strange boat and open up some sort of initial overtures with her alarming crew. His fore-fathers, said the old hunter, had seen these things and carefully handed them down.

BAFFIN LAND

A landfall in the Arctics is forbidding enough. Little is to be seen save bare rocks broken by ravines, filled with snow even so late as far into July and August--bare rocks, rising into gaunt hills from 500 to 1,500 feet high. The coastline is broken by bays and fiords, running deep inland. These inlets with their irregular outlines have a singular if rather drear beauty of their own, especially in the summer-time, when what little vegetation there may be--a spare, coarse grass and a red and white variety of heather--adds a grateful note of relief to the severe scene. There are miles and miles of rocky coast in places, where not so much as a handful of soil to support the hardiest little living thing could be found.

A glance at the map shows how the country lies. To the north of it, beyond the whaling grounds of Lancaster Sound, Devon Island is the next stretch of the poleward tapering continent. The Gulf of Bothnia and Fox Channel divide it on the west from the enormously broken coasts of the North West Territories. "The territory now known as Baffin Land was, until about 1875, supposed to consist of different islands, known as Cockburn Island, Cumberland Island, Baffin's Land, Sussex Island, Fox Land, etc. It seems to be now established that these are all connected and that there is but one great island, comprising them all, to which the name of Baffin Land has been given. It forms the northern side of Hudson Strait.... It has a length of about 1,005 English statute miles, with an average breadth of 305 miles, its greatest width being 500 and its least 150 miles. Its area approximates 300,000 square miles, and it therefore comprises about one tenth of the whole Dominion. It is the third largest island in the world, being exceeded only by Australia and Greenland"

It is an entirely Arctic country, immediately north of which runs the polar limit of human habitation.

Up to the actual time of writing, Baffin Land has been held to be incapable of inland commercial development, but a Royal Commission of the Government of the Dominion have recently examined the possibility of establishing there a reindeer and muskox ranching industry. Their report has not yet been published, but already some steps are being taken to realise such a project. If this should have results, a new means of livelihood would be opened up to the Eskimo, at present employed exclusively by the whaling agents on the coast. But the natives are not herders, and in all probability Lapps would be brought over from northern Europe to initiate the industry. From this would ensue doubtless some racial modifications--probably quite inappreciable to any but those observers, like the present writer, used to the pure and unmixed Eskimo stock. In the present book, little account will be taken of those tribes which have been in contact with other races, like those of Alaska and Labrador, whence results hybridization or degeneration. The writer proposes to confine his attention entirely to the people of ancient, unmixed blood, and to depict their life and customs as uninfluenced by the forces of trade and civilisation, which are already threatening to usher in a new era and extinguish the last representatives of the "reindeer age."

From another point of view, however, Baffin Land should not pass without remark. It has certain undetermined mineral resources. At Cape Durban, on the 67th parallel, coal is known to exist, and graphite has been found abundant and pure in several islands. Again, pyrites and mica are all to be found in its rocks.

The geology of the Arctic regions is, of course, a study in itself beyond the scope of this book. It may be of interest, however, to note that the two great distinctive bodies of rock to be observed in a country like Baffin Land are the granite and the finer grained, darker, basic rock. The ironstone from there is very similar to that brought from India to be smelted in England. The graphite might be mistaken for coal, but for its formation under geological conditions which could not have given rise to the latter. The two pyrites occur in the rocks of all ages; the one is a brassy yellow, very hard mineral, and the other a brilliant black stone looking much like a mass of loosely formed crystals. Garnets are also formed in several kinds of rock, but are chiefly to be found in the schist. As a rule, these little gems are far too much broken and split by the intense frost to be worth collecting. In the winter, the hardest rock is so split by the cold that every peculiarity of its composition can be clearly seen. The graphite can be chipped out with an axe and utilised very conveniently for writing.

The scenery everywhere is typical of the "Barrens," the "Bad Lands of the North." In winter, a featureless waste of snow, where in that dark season "come those wonderful nights of glittering stars and northern lights playing far and wide upon the icy deserts; or where the moon, here most melancholy, wanders on her silent way through scenes of desolation and death. In these regions the heavens count for more than elsewhere; they give colour and character, while the landscape, simple and unvarying, has no power to draw the eye." In summer, when the iron grip of ice is relaxed around the frozen coast, snow may disappear from the interminable wastes of rounded granite hills which are a feature of the interior. The effect of this endless succession of low bare elevations is one of "appalling desolation." The long, high-pitched howl of the wolf, the ultimate note of the wilderness, falls occasionally upon the ear of the twilight camper. This, and the cry of the loon from the lakes, with the crowing bleat of the ptarmigan in the low scrub, are the chance evening sounds in the Barrens.

The country generally is mountainous and of a hilly and barren aspect. In some districts comparatively level Laurentian areas occur, where immense herds of reindeer roam in the summer. At this season the ranges have a dark or nearly black appearance, owing to the growth of lichens upon them, but this sombre character is often relieved in valleys and on hill-sides by strips and patches of green, due to grasses and sedges in the lower bottoms, and a variety of flowering plants on sheltered slopes exposed to the sun.

The high interior of Baffin Land, lying just north of Cumberland Sound, is apparently all covered with ice, like the interior of Greenland. Around the margins of this ice cap the general elevation above the sea is about 5,000 feet, and it rises to about 8,000 feet in the central parts. Large portions of the northern interior are over 1,000 feet above the sea, so that vast regions of the country may be said to be truly mountainous.

There are no trees or shrubs of any kind in Baffin Land. Of Arctic flowers, a small yellow poppy seems to be the hardiest and most widespread. Even in those parts where desolation seems to reign supreme, this poppy , and a tiny purple saxifrage can generally be discerned. There are coarse grasses growing in scant patches, and immense tracts of reindeer moss, upon which the cariboo entirely subsist.

Unlike the sterile Antarctic, however, it is well known that the flora of Arctic lands is a feature of such importance that it has been the subject of an immense amount of expert investigation carried out by very many eminent botanists from every country. Professor Bruce says it is quite impossible to enter into detail regarding arctic botany, largely on account of its sheer profusion. "No matter how far the explorer goes, no matter how desolate a region he visits, he is sure to come across one or more species of flowering plants.... Every arctic traveller is thoroughly familiar with scurvy grass, the sulphur coloured buttercup, the little bladder campion, several potentillas, the blaeberry, many saxifrages, the rock rose, the cotton grass and the arctic willow." In Grinnell Land the British Arctic Expedition of 1875 met with "luxuriant vegetation." The presence or absence of the Arctic current along the shores of these countries seems to have much to do with the problems of vegetation. Baffin Land, bathed in its icy waters, is far more barren than Greenland, where it does not touch. Possibly Grinnell Land is immune from its influence. It is, nevertheless, quite possible for a dense plant life to flourish--under certain conditions of climate, altitude and situation--deep within the Arctic Circle, where even the tundra, a wilderness of snow in the winter, becomes an impassable fever-haunted, mosquito ridden, torrid, flower decked swamp in the summer.

But there is more than this in the botany of Baffin Land! The natural or geological history of the Arctic regions generally is that of the earth's crust itself, and from this point of view the study of these northern blossoms is more wonderful than that of its rocks.

The fossil plants of these ice-bound countries belong to the Miocene period, an epoch warmer than the present, which preceded the glacial age now triumphant there. The latitudes of Baffin Land were once covered by extensive forests representing fifty or sixty different species of arborescent trees, most of them with deciduous leaves, some three or four inches in diameter, the elm, pine, oak, maple, plane, and even some evergreens, showing an entirely different condition of seasons to that which now holds sway in the far, far north. The modern botany of the Arctics, comprising some 300 kinds of flowering plants, besides mosses, algae, lichens, fungi, is characteristic of the Scandinavian peninsula. Now, the Scandinavian flora is one of the oldest on the globe. It represents unique problems in distribution, from which the most tremendous scientific deductions have been drawn, such as those concerning a former disposition of terrestrial continents and oceans, and some concerning changes in the direction of the earth's axis itself! All this is very far beyond the scope of any such account of Baffin Land as the present. Suffice it, nevertheless, to indicate the deep vistas of interest that lie behind the "appalling desolation" of its appearance to-day, and the limitations of its hyperborean native folk.

The reindeer moss is a very important asset of the country. It is a delicate grey-green in colour and beautiful in form as well. It grows luxuriantly to about the height of six inches. When dry, it is brittle, and may be crumbled to powder in the hands; but when wet it is very much of the consistency of jelly, and very slippery. The reindeer live entirely upon it all the year round. In the winter, when it lies under a deep blanket of snow, to get at it the deer have to scrape their way down with their great splay hoofs. It sometimes happens that a season comes when a thaw may be followed by a sharp frost. In this case the surface of the snow is first melted and then quickly frozen, making a coating of ice over all the surface of the ground. To scrape this would cut the deers' legs, so there is an exodus of the herd to other feeding places, and hunger even to famine and starvation may reign in the district they have deserted. Generally speaking, the herds keep to the high grounds and hills in the winter, because there the moss is more exposed and easier to come at. They move down to the coast at intervals, to lick the salt which comes up through the "sigjak," i.e., ground ice, along the shore, when the tides rises and the water leaves pools behind it.

The deer feed in a peculiar manner. Once a pit has been sunk in the snow and the moss at the bottom is browsed down, the creatures do not attempt to enlarge the place, but scramble out again, only to dig a fresh hole and sink shoulder high in it at a little distance, and begin feeding afresh. The herd is always dogged by a pack of watchful wolves, ever on the qui vive to attack; but the leaders' vigilance never slackens, and battle breaks out in the wild at the first movement of aggression.

There are one or two particularly interesting facts, astronomical and otherwise, which account for the extraordinary physical phenomena and conditions of life in the polar regions. To begin with the seasons. The "Arctic" properly so called is geographically defined by that circle of latitude where the sun on midwinter day does not rise, and where on midsummer day it does not set. In Arctic countries the sun is never more than 23 1/2 degrees above the horizon, and their intense cold is due, in summer, to the sharp obliquity of his rays, and in winter, to his entire absence. In the latitude of Blacklead Island, on December 25th, the whole orb of the sun is not visible, only the upper section shows above the horizon for a brief ten minutes at midday. On May 18th, conversely, the sun has been noted as shining for eighteen hours, the remaining six out of the twenty-four being a bright twilight, scarcely distinguishable from day.

The days grow ever shorter and shorter until, in midwinter, there may be only a few hours or even minutes of daylight left. The long Arctic night lasts from September to March.

At the end of June, summer is come; the sun is really hot, and the long-covered earth, bared at last to its benign influence, puts forth heather and grass and flowers. For six months there is no more night. Its place is taken by the pale light that offers so strange a phenomenon to the dweller from the south. If the sky be unclouded, shadows will be seen pointing to the south. If clouds cover the heavens, the landscape stands out without shadow at all, clear and sharp under this strange illumination. There is no one point from which the light can come; it comes from everywhere. Owing to the length of this Arctic "day," the ground has no time to radiate away the welcome warmth, hence the rapid growth of what vegetation the region may show. Again, as Nansen says so poetically: "In these regions the heavens count for more than elsewhere: they give colour and character ... to the landscape ... it is flooded with that melancholy light which soothes the soul so fondly and is so characteristic of the northern night."

The stars are an open book to the Eskimo. They know all the principal groups, and use them for the directing of their journeys. They can make a very creditable chart of the northern heavens. They recognise the Plough, and the Bear , and they recognise the constellation of three stars in a straight line and at equal distances from each other, which they call the "Runners," and describe as the spirits of three brothers in pursuit. The arctic hunters are marvellous students of nature generally. They have the lore of the wild at their finger tips, and all the wisdom of the seasons. It is probable that this primitive people have preserved nearly all the original instincts--as to the presence of danger, right direction, etc., etc.--of primaeval man, which are all but extinct in the over-civilisation of the modern European.

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