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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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, 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.
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 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 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.