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.

Baffin Land, or Baffin Island—the country with which this book has to do—is an immense portion of the Canadian Arctic archipelago lying between latitude 62° and 72° N. By far the greater part of it extends north of the Arctic Circle, while its southern-most cape touches the latitude of the Faroe Islands, ’twixt the Shetlands and Iceland, in our own more [33]familiar waters. The whole country lies far beyond the northernmost limit of trees, although it is not without an Arctic flora of its own. Baffin Sea, or Baffin Bay (that stretch of the North Atlantic Ocean which, beyond Davis Strait, divides the west coast of Greenland from North America), was discovered by the navigator William Baffin in 1615. Hence the name of the country. Discredit was thrown throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on Baffin’s work in the north; and, after him, Arctic exploration ceased for about two centuries. Then Sir John Ross verified Baffin’s observations in 1818, and many of them became the bases of later expeditionary enterprise.

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 [34]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” (Annual Report of Geolog. Survey of Canada, 1898.)

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 [35]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 (plumbago) 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 (magnetic pyrites) 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 [36]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.” (Nansen.) 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 (of spring and summer) in the Barrens.

The country generally is mountainous and of a hilly and barren aspect. In some districts comparatively [37]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 (Papaver radicatum), and a tiny purple saxifrage (Saxifraga appositifolia) 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 [38]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 (far north of Baffin 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 [39]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 [40]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 [41]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 23½ 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 (unless mist or snow overcast the heavens) 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 whole year round there is little to be seen but rocks and snow. No tilling, sowing, harvesting, mark the progress of the seasons or call man to the pursuits which have brought all civilisation in their train in milder climes. These seasons (which depend, of course, upon the position of the earth in its orbit round the sun, and upon the inclination of the polar [42]axis to the plane of the ecliptic giving a six month’s day and six month’s night at the poles), are markedly defined in Baffin Land. But far more distinctly so on shore than at sea, where unbroken ice may reign supreme throughout the greater part of the twelve-month. Winter sets in on the southern coast about the end of September; farther north a week or two earlier. By this date the hills are getting their snow caps, which extend downwards every day, and a thin sheet of ice appears upon the sea at night. A rim of ice along the shore marks the rise and fall of the tide. Frequent snowstorms now set in, and the ice at sea thickens and strengthens, until by November it extends as far as the eye can rove. This ice, however, is not stout or welded enough to bear sleds, except in the fiords and smaller bays, until nearly Christmas time. The sea freezes when the temperature of the air falls to about 15° F., and the whole surface of the water becomes covered with a mass of ice spicules known to polar sailors as Bay Ice, from its forming first in the bays of the coast. Presently this solidifies and thickens, growing ever whiter and more translucent in the process, and is broken, even in calm weather, by the action of gentle swell or the currents beneath into thousands of discs, large and small, like pans of ice. Sea ice is formed at a temperature of 3° F. below the freezing point of fresh water. There are many remarkable and interesting physical distinctions between ice formed on land and ice formed at sea. The latter when melted is quite drinkable, [43]being not nearly so salt as salt water. The intense cold, though, of drinking water so obtained tends to inflame the mucous membrane of the mouth and throat, and its slight salinity still further augments thirst; so it is never resorted to except of necessity. These pans eventually freeze together into one great solid floor of “pancake ice,” and the Eskimo, away hunting in the winter for seal, may camp and live for weeks, miles out from land on the frozen sea.

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.

By the end of March, however, the sun is once more high in the heavens; the sudden spring has begun, and the sound is everywhere heard of water trickling under the snow. Readers of Alaskan romance will recall many a fine passage about the ice “going out” on the Yukon, and realise the terrific transformation undergone by the whole still, silent, rigid, frozen landscape when the iron bonds of winter at length give way. Springtime in the Arctics is a wonderful time. The thaw comes from below. The rocks take the heat, and the snow sinks down, baring more and more of them every day. It grows quite warm; bird sounds (ptarmigan and snow bunting) enliven all the day; ducks quack at the floe edge. Sunrise beams upon the Arctic hills until they lie smiling in the full beauty of sunshine on their mantles of untrodden snow. [44]

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 (which is indeed called “Nanook”—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 [45]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.

In August autumn begins. Last year’s ice has been broken up and carried far out to sea. There are frequent showers of rain, and the nights begin again to encroach more and more on the day. It is about this time that the trading ships generally arrive and put in at various points along the coast to do business and refit. They pick up the annual intelligence of the whaling stations, and leave for home as soon as the new ice begins to form.

Then winter comes down upon the land once more. The sky, like velvet, is bespangled with stars of incomparable brilliance, burning like opals. The Northern Lights, like lambent curtains of amazing illumination, swing weirdly through the sky; the blanched hills and the frozen fiords stand out in ghostly black and white under the startling moonlight. There is no sound save the sharp cracking of rock or ice under the strain of the intense frost, the uneasy growl of dogs, the distant howl of a wolf.

Suddenly, however, there may be a chorus of barking in the night, as a strange team of dogs sweeps into view up the fiord, or the harbour, and visitors [46]descend upon the camp. Except for the noise, one could imagine the newcomers to be the ghosts of ancient hunters haunting their old grounds. But cheery cries, the crack of whips and the howls of the dogs, dispel any such idea as the group comes up. They are stalwart and sturdy individuals enough, clad from head to foot in deerskin, and covered with rime and frost. They are seeking hospitality here, and at once friendly doors are open to them, invitations are readily extended and accepted, and soon everyone of the strangers is comfortably bestowed (after Eskimo notions of comfort) in one or another of the various dwellings, the dogs are unharnessed and fed, and peace resumes her tranquil sway.

The natives thus name the four seasons: Opingrak, spring; Auyak, summer; Okeoksak, autumn (i.e., material for winter), and Okeok, winter. The months are named by the sequence of events—the coming of the ducks, the birth of the reindeer fawns, the coming of the fish (sea trout), etc., as “the duck month,” “the fawn month,” “the fish month,” etc. And the days are distinguished as “oblo,” to-day; “koukpât,” to-morrow; “ikpuksâk,” yesterday; “ikpuksâne,” the day before yesterday, and so forth. “Akkâgo” means next year, and “akkâne” is last year. [47]