Baffin Land

“ The first land that was sighted was the coast of Greenland at Cockayne Sound, but Baffin did not stop, pressing onwards until he reached Hare Island to the north of Disco in 70° 26′ N. On the last day of April, Hope Sanderson, the furthest point of Davis, was reached, and next day the progress of the Discovery was checked by heavy floes. Anchorage was found near some islands whence the native men fled, but some girls were left behind and received help from the explorers, so Baffin gave the name of “Women Islands” to the group. ”

“ The eastern coast of Baffin island is generally high and rocky. The land rises quickly from the sea, often in abrupt cliffs, to elevations of a thousand feet or more, after which the upward slope is more gentle as the land rises towards the interior tableland. The general elevation of the tableland, to the south of Cumberland gulf, ranges from 2,000 to 3,000 feet, while to the northward this wide coastal area is much higher, reaching a general elevation of 5,000 feet, with hills rising above that perhaps one or two thousand feet higher. ”

“ There is a Government Agent in charge of the tribe, and its material needs are provided for by the annual supply ship sent along the coast. It is generally the Agent, trading or Departmental, who extends the first handclasp of welcome to medical man or evangelist who betakes himself to the peoples of the Arctic.
There have been, however, few travellers in Baffin Land, excepting, of course, the seamen who use its coast. Much of the country is unexplored. Probably the only whites who have penetrated it at all have been missionaries and explorers. ”

“ The explorers went on bravely till they were stopped by masses of ice. They thought they must be at the mouth of a large bay, and, seeing no prospect of a passage to the west, they turned back. When, two hundred years later, Parry sailed in Baffin's track he named this place Baffin Land "out of respect to the memory of that able and enterprising navigator."
The Discovery arrived in Plymouth Sound by September, without the loss of one man—a great achievement in these days of salt junk and scurvy. ”

“ Prince Regent Inlet may present an avenue to the magnetic pole; to the south, Baffin Land—with its Eskimo settlements, its herds of reindeer, its wealth in fishes and birds, its fossils and minerals—offers a tempting field, larger than the British Isles. Even Greenland may not be beyond the sphere of that strategic point. ”

“ Concerning this project your committee unanimously concur as to the following propositions: ( 1 ) They believe that this expedition to a point lying in the path of the whalers who annually visit the western waters of Baffin Bay is thoroughly safe and practicable; that it is desirable for scientific purposes and for geographic'exploration; and that no part of the Arctic regions gives promise of greater opportunities for extensive discoveries, with a minimum of danger, hardship, and expense. ”

“ A small party, such as you have planned, with modest aims, is better than a more pretentious expedition. Hall, Schwatka, Peary, were more successful in proportion to the money expended than the leaders of larger parties. An expedition such as yours ought to provide for a successful retreat. This you have done by placing your supply depot in the line of the Scotch whaling vessels which every year skirt the northern edge of the Baffin Bay ice pack, and commence their whale-catching off the mouth of Jones Sound. ”

“ Pointing southwards, Sacheuse told them that the strangers had come from a distant country.
"That cannot be; there is nothing but ice there," was the answer.
Soon the Englishmen made friends with these people, whom they called Arctic Highlanders, giving the name of the Arctic Highlands to all the land in the north-east corner of Baffin's Bay. Passing Cape York, they followed the almost perpendicular coast, even as Baffin had done. They passed Wolstenholme Sound and Whale Sound; they saw Smith's Sound, and named the capes on either side Isabella and Alexander after their two ships. ”

“ Jones Sound and Smith Sound were both discovered by Baffin in 1616, but while Smith Sound, opening northward, has been thronged with explorers, Jones Sound, opening westward, has been visited only three times, each time only for two days, and expl6red only 160 miles westward.
The northwest passage was discovered only to prove impracticable for vessels; and as for the attainment of the Pole, scientific men are unanimous in regarding it as of no practical value except for geodesy. ”

“ Baffin saw the opening to the west which Ross, two centuries later, was to call Lancaster Sound, and through which Parry was to penetrate to Melville Island and to the Polar Sea. He was convinced that a northwest passage existed, though he never made a second voyage in search of it. For one hundred and sixty years, now, the Arctic waters of the American continent were left undisturbed by adventurers from Europe. ”

“ The long and glorious story of Arctic discovery is drawing to a close. Two unknown areas of unequal importance remain. One is the extensive region now known as Baffin Island, which needs thorough exploration, and will doubtless receive it from the Dominion Government in due time. The other is the part known as the Beaufort Sea, a much more extensive unknown area from Prince Patrick and Baring or Banks Islands westwards to the Liakhov Island between the 70th and 80th parallels of North Latitude, and indeed much further to the north. ”

“ The existence of such a bay as Hudson's was described to be, induced the merchants of England to believe that they had at length found out the entrance to a passage which would lead them to the East Indies: many voyages were therefore undertaken, in a very short time after this bay had been discovered. The most important was that of Bylot and Baffin: they advanced through Davis's Straits into an extensive sea, which they called Baffin's Bay: they proceeded, according to their account, as far north as the latitude 78°. ”

“ Icebergs we soon shall take our leave of; they are only found where there is a coast on which glaciers can form; they are good for nothing but to yield fresh water to the vessels; it will be all field, pack, and saltwater ice presently.
Now we are in Baffin’s Bay, explored in the voyages of Bylot and Baffin, 1615-16. When, in 1817, a great movement in the Greenland ice caused many to believe that the northern passages would be found comparatively clear ”

“ The large ice-fields which the whaler encounters in Baffin’s Bay, or on the seas between Spitzbergen and Greenland, constitute one of the marvels of the deep. There is a solemn grandeur in the slow majestic motion with which they are drifted by the currents to the south; and their enormous masses, as mile after mile comes floating by, impress the spectator with the idea of a boundless extent and an irresistible power. But, vast and mighty as they are, they are unable to withstand the elements combined for their destruction, and their apparently triumphal march leads them only to their ruin. ”

“ There are large quantities of mud on and through the ice, so that all the streams discharging from it are very dirty. At some former time this glacier filled the entire valley extending to its mouth five miles away, and depositing against the rocky walls banks of boulder drift to a height of four hundred feet above the present level of the sea. There is no doubt that in the glacial period the size and extent of the glaciers of Baffin island were much greater than at present ”

“ We reached Baffin’s Bay without incident. We took deep-sea-soundings as we approached its axis, and found a reliable depth of nineteen hundred fathoms: an interesting result, as it shows that the ridge, which is known to extend between Ireland and Newfoundland in the bed of the Atlantic, is depressed as it passes further to the north. A few days more found us off the coast of Greenland, making our way toward Fiskernaes, the harbour of which we entered on the 1st of July, amid the clamour of its entire population, assembled on the rocks to greet us. ”

“ These rocks form a considerable part of North Greenland, on the east side of Baffin's Bay, and constitute the rock of the country at the east side of the island of North Devon, which forms a portion of the coast-line of the west of Baffin's Bay, and the north side of the entrance into Lancaster Sound. ”

“ It was on a [Pg 651] voyage undertaken in the next year, 1615, that Baffin, exceeding the northing of Davis, found lying before him the great expanse of Baffin's Bay, through which he proceeded till he found a northern exit in Sir Thomas Smith's Sound, under 78°. Baffin did all this with an accuracy which surprised Sir John Ross, who was the next to enter the bay, two centuries later. It was in these years of Hudson and Baffin that Napier invented logarithms and simplified the processes of nautical calculations. ”

“ The account of this voyage, written by Baffin, was printed very incorrectly by Purchas; the original manuscript, with map, is in the British Museum (Add. MSS. 12, 206) , and was edited for the Hakluyt Society in 1849 (Rundall, Narratives of Voyages towards the North-west) . As pilot of the Discovery in 1615, Baffin carefully examined Hudson Strait and the eastern coast of Southampton Island, with such accuracy that his latitudes and his notes on the tides are in remarkable agreement with the more rigid observations of the present century. ”

“ In the extreme north of the bay there is an inlet or a channel, called by Baffin Smith's Sound; this Sir John saw, but did not enter. It never has been explored. It may be an inlet only; but it is also very possible that by this channel ships might get into the Polar Sea, and sail by the north shore of Greenland to Spitzbergen. Turning that corner, and descending along the western coast of Baffin's Bay, there is another inlet called Jones's Sound by Baffin, also unexplored. ”

“ We therefore turned back walking across the higher grounds direct for the head of Union Bay, a route which gave us considerable insight into the ravine-rent condition of this limestone country, at much cost of bodily fatigue to ourselves. The glaciers in the valleys, or ravines, hardly deserved the name, after the monsters we had seen in Baffin's Bay, and, I should think, in extraordinary seasons, they often melted away altogether, for, in spite of so severe a one as the present year had been, there was but little ice remaining. ”

“ Supposing, then, that from the east of Asia these people first migrated to the American continent, and thence, eventually wandered to the eastern shores of Greenland, it became an interesting question to us, how the lands upon our northern hand, in our passage to the west up Barrow's Strait, should bear such numerous marks of human location, whereas upon the southern side they were comparatively scarce; and how the natives residing in the northern portion of Baffin's Bay should have been ignorant that their brethren dwelt in great numbers southward of the glaciers of Melville Bay. ”

“ Then the demon drove on. But the men who were with the merchant said, "Sir! those men told us that yonder was the beginning of a great forest, and from there onwards it was always raining. Their clothes and hair were dripping with water. Let us throw away the water-jars and go on faster with lighter carts!"
Stopping all the carts the wise merchant asked the men, "Have you ever heard any one say that there was a lake or pond in this desert? You have lived near here always."
"We never heard of a pond or lake," they said.
[50] "Does any man feel a wind laden with dampness blowing against him?" ”

“ I see no reason for supposing that any part of the revolutions in physical geography, to which the maps above described have reference, indicate any catastrophes greater than those which the present generation has witnessed. If Man was in existence when the Cromer forest was becoming submerged, he would have felt no more alarm than the Danish settlers on the east coast of Baffin's Bay, when they found the poles, which they had driven into the beach to secure their boats, had subsided below their original level. ”

“ The most reliable experts unite in the conviction that the Mackenzie Basin is capable of supporting an agricultural population. The soil is rich; and in that part of the Basin alone, lying between Athabasca Lake and the Arctic Ocean, there is a belt of land 940 miles long and over 60 miles wide. ”

“ It is the story of the transformation of a wide-stretching wilderness—of an ever-advancing frontier—into great cities, diversified industries, varying social interests, and an intensely complex life. Wave upon wave of races of mankind has flowed over the developing and enlarging West, and each has left its impress on that area. Across the trail of the Indian and the trapper, the highway of the pioneer on his westward journey, have spread the tilled fields of the farmer, or along it has run the railroad. The farm has become a town-site and then a manufacturing city ”

“ The Hudson’s Bay Company’s men were reaching the coast of their Territories here and there; but otherwise the whole Arctic Ocean north of British America was unknown.
To relieve herself of the shame of this Great Britain soon sent into that field a rapid succession of explorers, many of whom soon became famous. The very first of these, John Ross, despatched in 1818, confirmed fully the geography laid down by Baffin as far as Cape York, in spite of the learned book-makers, and reported a great number and variety of interesting facts ”