for even where the snow is still lying it is soft and almost impassable.
Towards the end of May it often freezes during the day, and at night the temperature may fall to –10°; in the sun, however, it is warm. Much of the snow seems to evaporate directly, and over the snow patches the air quivers as on the hottest summer day. Cloudy weather is not rare, and in the evening a clammy fog often descends. By the coast the weather is perhaps a degree worse than inland. During almost the whole of May 1923 there was practically a continuous series of snow-storms on the stretch between Chesterfield and Eskimo Point. The soft, impassable snow, the overcast sky and the black, Huronian rocks which projected here and there, gave the landscape an uncommonly gloomy appearance — a land clad in funereal clothing.
By this time, however, spring is advancing with gigantic strides. The sap-green moss stands with spore-cases erect; crowberry, Cassiope, whortleberry and other evergreen bushes at once commence the work of the oncoming summer; dwarf-birch and willow are in bud. Gulls, terns, and jaegers appear on the shore and fly far in over the country to places where the ice is now disappearing from the current holes of the river. On the sea ice the fjord seal lies in crowds and basks in the sun. But nothing approaches the impression of swarming life which suddenly awakens even in over the waste tundra and forms such a contrast to the stillness of winter a month or two before. The cranes arrive, in numbers but only few at a time, and their distant "krorrk-krorrk" blends on quiet evenings with the melodious "a'anik" of the long-tailed duck. Snow geese (Anser hyperboreus), Hutchin's geese (A. canadensis var. Hutchinsii), mergansers (Mergus serrator), king eiders (Somateria spectabilis), great northern divers and loons (Colymbus glacialis and C. septentrionalis), phalaropes (Phalaropus fulicarius), sandpipers (Tringa fusicollis, etc.) and others make their way up here from the south. Rock ptarmigan and willow grouse appear in flights of hundreds; the bleating cackle of the former and the pheasant-like scream of the latter can be heard everywhere.
Caribou tracks cross and recross in the patches of snow, and small flocks of the animals can be seen at all times in the distance. When they move over the ridges in endless, multi-legged rows standing but blackly against the clear sky, it is as if one suddenly understood the primitive etchings of the Eskimos and the palæolithic art in the caves of France and Spain. Soon the cows with year-old calves and the young bulls begin to come. It is now easy for the Eskimos to catch animals, and the hunger of the late winter, when the autumn stores have been eaten up, is at an end. I will never forget the wide-
