A. P. Low

“ These undeveloped resources of the north will no doubt when developed add greatly to the annual shipping of Hudson bay, but the main increase to the fleet will be due to the products of the great plains of the Northwest, now rapidly filling with robust settlers. These products of the western farms, grain, butter, and cattle, will naturally seek the shortest road to the European markets; a road not only shorter, but owing to its cool climate, capable of landing perishable products and grain in a better condition than the more southern routes. ”

“ There is no premium put on laziness and false piety, as is so often the case where the missionary makes a free distribution of food and clothing to the natives. Then it often happens that the good, industrious hunter, who goes away from the station to provide for his family, receives none of the gifts, which are given to the shiftless individuals who hang about the station in a state of pious poverty. The Moravian Eskimos must provide for themselves by work of one kind or another, and the shiftless ones only receive sufficient to keep life going, without any of its luxuries. ”

“ The cliffs to the westward of Cuming creek gradually become lower, and the crystalline rocks below the limestones soon disappear beneath the sea. A few small glaciers discharge into the sea in the neighbourhood of that place, but as the coast is followed westward the ice-cap retreats inland, and is finally lost sight of, nothing being left to break the monotony of the dirty yellow colour of the limestone except a few patches of struggling vegetation that increase towards the westward where the climate is evidently milder. ”

“ The Akolingmiut tribe reside in the neighbourhood of Big island, in the central part of the north shore of Hudson strait. These are among the oldest known Eskimos and came in contact with the earliest white explorers of Hudson bay. Old writers mention their filthy habits, and the present generation appears to keep up the reputation of their ancestors, as being the most degraded of all the tribes. For a number of years the American whalers had a station on the coast, at Spicer harbour, some miles to the westward of Big island, but it has long been abandoned. ”

“ Game of all kinds is abundant; the deer come to the coast at this season; seals are plentiful in the open water, and walruses are floating about on the loose ice; the Arctic salmon swarm in the shallow water along the coast, and thousands of eggs of the sea fowl may be collected from any of the smaller outer islands. A little later the white porpoise enters the mouths of the larger rivers in schools, and is killed with the harpoon and gun from the kyaks. The summer harpoon differs from the winter one, in that the iron work of the latter is replaced by ivory obtained from walrus tusks. ”

“ By the beginning of January, James bay is frozen across, and at the same time solid ice usually extends from the east coast of Hudson bay to the outer line of islands, some sixty or seventy miles from that coast. In other parts of Hudson bay, and in Hudson strait a margin of solid ice usually extends from one to five miles from the shore, except where the coast is high and bold with deep water close to the base of the cliffs. In such places, especially at headlands, solid ice does not form, and the natives in winter often have to make long and difficult detours inland to pass them. ”

“ Ships entering Hudson strait from the Atlantic during the early part of the season, when ice is present in the strait, should keep in the northern half of the channel between Resolution and the Button islands. Care should be taken to keep some miles from Resolution, as the strong currents close to the island cause the ice to come together and open again with considerable violence. The north side of the strait should be followed as far as Big island, keeping at a respectful distance from the land in order to avoid the pressure when the ice is pressed on the land by southerly winds. ”

“ Lengthy records of most of these expeditions have been published, in which the trials and hardships undergone are recorded in a matter-of-fact way, without any attempt to excite sympathy, and all honour should be paid to the memory of these men, many of them volunteers, for the dangers they passed through in the endeavour to rescue their fellowmen from terrible death by starvation and cold in the inaccessible Arctics. Many lost their own lives, while others drifted all winter in ships crushed between great floes of arctic ice ”

“ At every stopping place traps are set for foxes. The trap is usually a single-spring steel one, of which each native usually has two or three. The traps are set on the snow and covered with a thin sheet of hard snow, the bait being hidden alongside. Where steel traps are not available, long narrow boxes of stone or ice are constructed, with the bait in the back part, and attached to a dead fall, so that when it is disturbed, the door falls upon the fox. The Arctic fox is generally plentiful in the early winter months, when many of them travel southward along the coast. ”

“ The light-coloured limestone forms the bottom of the harbour, and gives the water a dangerous looking, light tinge, which is quite misleading, as the depth is sufficient for the largest ships. The east and west sides of the harbour are bounded by high cliffs, while at the northern end the land is low, and it is not far across it to the bay on the northern coast lying directly west of Cape Clarence. ”

“ Previous to the conquest of Canada, the French fur traders had carried their trading posts beyond the great lakes, across the wooded country to Lake Winnipeg, and thence up the Saskatchewan to the foot of the Rocky mountains. Shortly after the cession, a number of Scotch and Canadian merchants acquired the rights of the old French company, and prosecuted the trade with such increased vigour as to greatly diminish that of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who in self-defence were compelled to establish trading posts inland close to those of their rivals. ”

“ No cannibal may eat bear flesh, lest it should create a taste for human flesh. The newly-killed seal has its eyes punctured, so that its spirit may not see that it is being taken to the snow-house. When the carcass is brought into the house fresh snow is dipped into the kettle and the water from it is dripped over the seal’s mouth. Before going sealing, for the first time on the ice, a fire of shrubs is made, and the clothing and implements of the hunter are thoroughly smoked in it. ”

“ A whale is usually sighted by the column of spray which it throws up in breathing, and which often rises twenty feet in the air, accompanied by a puffing sound. A whale usually spouts or breathes five or six times when it comes to the surface for that purpose, and so remains up for several minutes. It then goes down to feed, and remains under the water for fifteen or twenty minutes, during that time travelling perhaps at most a mile. If possible, advantage is taken of the wind to approach the whale, to avoid the noise made in rowing. ”

“ The wide fringe of islands to the westward practically ends at Fullerton, so that a ship making the coast may know the position by the presence or absence of islands; but as the islands are very low it is hard to distinguish them from the mainland at a safe distance away, as the shoals and reefs extend more than five miles beyond the harbour. The surveys made in the spring of 1904 show that a fairly safe channel will be found by keeping well to the eastward of the harbour, and by then following a northwest course, keeping in line the beacons on a small island about a mile outside the harbour. ”

“ During the summer months all the able-bodied men, with some of the women and children, proceed to the head of the bays, and thence far inland, to hunt the barren-ground caribou, to secure a supply of skins for winter clothing and bedding. They are absent until September. On their return they are employed at the whale fishery until the gulf freezes fast, usually early in December. During the remainder of the winter, they maintain themselves by harpooning seal through breathing-holes in the solid ice, or by killing them in the open water, at the edge of the floe. ”

“ The narwhal is only found in the northern waters of Hudson bay, where it is abundant in the ice-laden waters of Fox channel and Frozen strait.
The narwhal is distinguished in the water from the White whale by its darker colour, its white spots and its horn. The colour becomes lighter with age, so that very old individuals become dirty white. According to the Eskimos, the horn is confined to the males, and its chief use is for domestic battle. Only one horn is usually developed, growing out of the upper jaw, and projecting directly forward. ”

“ When hunting deer from the kyak on the inland lakes a small piece of sealskin is deposited under a stone on the margin of the lake.
When the musk-ox hunt is in progress, the hair must not be removed from deerskins, and no work with iron may be undertaken.
All deerskin garments must be made on the land, and not after the family has moved upon the ice, until the March moon, when the women are allowed to work at deerskins in an iglo on the land, but not on a day when a walrus has been killed. Soapstone is another material which must not be worked on the ice. ”

“ The glacier is a mile wide where it empties into the harbour, the ice along the front being about a hundred feet thick. As there is now very little motion to the ice, few icebergs break off, and those that do are too small to cause danger to the vessels in the anchorage. The southern corner of the bay is free of ice, and a small river discharges there from a southern valley. The glacier comes down the northwest valley, leaving its rocky wall about a mile inland; thence to the sea it is bounded by a steep ridge of glacial drift full of large boulders ”

“ AMUSEMENTS. The Eskimos are firm believers in the old adage that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and all join heartily in outdoor and indoor sports. Football is the popular outdoor amusement, and men, women and children join in kicking about the ice a ball of feathers or deer hair covered with deerskin. There do not appear to be any rules, each playing for himself. There is another ball game, where the ball is batted with the open hand backwards and forwards, the object being to prevent it from touching the ground. Wrestling is indulged in by the young men ”

“ The Harp seal is more or less common on the northern coasts, and southward along the Atlantic coast of Labrador, at all seasons. In Hudson strait they are rare in summer, but are not uncommon after the shore-ice forms in the autumn, and before it leaves in the early summer. These seals commonly travel in bands, and are known by their habit of frequently leaping from the water. They are rare in Hudson bay, especially during the summer season, and are only occasionally seen at other times.
The flesh and blubber are used by the natives for food and fuel. ”

“ The eastern third of the island is composed of crystalline rocks, and rises to an irregular ice-clad tableland some 3,000 feet in altitude. The rise to the interior is somewhat abrupt, and the landscape, seen from the sea, shows an interior ice-cap in the distance, with bare rocky hills rising irregularly above the slopes of the glaciers flowing down the valleys to the sea. The western part of the island is formed of limestone, and is a flat tableland cut by deep narrow fiords that extend inland many miles from the coast, and are continued beyond the salt water as the valleys of small rivers. ”

“ Like all the great northern bays, Baffin bay has a current flowing northward along the eastern or Greenland coast, and a cold Arctic current setting southward along the western shores. These currents have a considerable influence upon the climate of the adjoining land, and the mean annual temperature at points of corresponding latitude is several degrees higher on the Greenland side. This difference of climate is marked along the middle and northern coasts, that of Greenland being practically free from ice and snow, except where glaciers from the great central ice-cap flow down into the sea. ”

“ In the small launch, the survey of the bay was continued to its head, some five miles beyond, where the ship anchored. At the head of the bay three families of natives were found, living in a state of destitution. This was their first direct contact with white men; they were somewhat shy and frightened, but a present of tobacco and biscuit soon made all good friends. These people do not visit any of the far away trading posts, but trade their furs with their neighbours on the east or west for guns and other articles of civilization. ”

“ Every native who learns to read, and who possesses a book, becomes the teacher of the uninstructed; in this manner education is spreading rapidly. A good example is found in the natives on the northwest coast of Hudson bay, several of whom have learned to read from the Big island natives on the Scotch whaler, who were in turn instructed by visiting Eskimos from Cumberland gulf. ”

“ Southampton is situated in the northern part of Hudson bay, which it divides into Fox channel on its east side and Roes Welcome on the other side, being separated from the mainland at its north end by the narrow Frozen strait. The island attains its greatest length from north to south, covering three degrees of latitude, or a distance of two hundred and ten miles. Its greatest breadth of two hundred miles is across its southern part; its eastern side trends northwest, and its western shore lies north and south, so that the shape is practically a triangle, having an area of 19,100 square miles. ”

“ If the seal is a large one and struggles much, a turn of the line is taken around the waist, and the hunter braces himself for an encounter, in which the seal is sometimes the victor. Great care is necessary in paying out the line, for many a finger has been lost by becoming entangled in a loop. The violently struggling seal must soon breathe, and to do so is compelled to rise in the hole; then the hunter endeavours to drive the pointed rod into its brain, and usually does so very quickly. The hole is then enlarged with the ice-chisel on the end of the spear handle. ”

“ If the hole appears well frequented, and the Eskimo is anxious to obtain a seal, he takes the dog some distance away and ties him securely by his trace to the ice. He then returns to the hole, and clears the snow from about its opening, replacing it with a fresh thin slab, on which the centre of the hole is plainly marked. If he intends to remain until a seal comes, he often erects a low wall of snow to windward, and sometimes places a block close to the hole as a seat. A piece of deer or bear skin is put down to stand on ”

“ The crystalline rocks, which occupy the eastern part of the great island of North Devon, are overlaid by nearly flat-bedded limestones, in the western part commencing on the west side of Croker bay. This change of rock is accompanied by a change in the physical character of the coast as the ragged irregular granite hills of the eastern land are replaced by a flat tableland which rises in nearly perpendicular cliffs directly from the sea to elevations varying from 800 to 1,200 feet. Behind these the land rises in steps to nearly 2,000 feet, where it is lost beneath the ice-cap of the interior. ”

“ The Eskimos of the east side of Hudson bay and of the Belcher islands annually come under the teaching of the missionary at Great Whale river, and have to a great extent abandoned the practice of old customs and beliefs. The only custom that they cling tenaciously to is that relating to polygamy. ”

“ Very strong tides rush backwards and forwards through the channel, rendering dangerous an otherwise good passage.
The southern shore of Baffin island is indented with many bays, and no doubt when this coast is surveyed excellent harbours will be found along it. The land rises rapidly from the coast, to an elevation of upwards of 2,500 feet; far inland is seen the glistening white surface of the great Grinnel glacier, which flows northward into Frobisher bay. Not being very active, it does not discharge icebergs. ”