innumerable, smaller blocks, screwed and packed together into ridges over which it is often a piece of hard work to drag the canoe. A big icefloe like this can suddenly split up into pieces, and twisting and bobbing, with a noise like distant thunder, all these uncountable pieces drive at a furious speed down towards the next block, to be ground to powder there. When this happens, it is best not to be in the way with the canoe! In contrast to the sub-arctic forests, the wealth of water of the Barren Grounds is in summer a hindrance to communication. Originally the Eskimos had not travelling boats and are only now beginning to purchase canoes of the Hudson's Bay Company; but it will be long before they learn to derive full advantage of the rivers.
On the sea and the lakes the ice still covers the surface. After the snow layer has melted and the water has percolated through the cracks, there is again a short period when the sledge going is splendid. The land water gradually increases and, on the southern part of the west coast of Hudson Bay, the ice vanishes about July 1st, but at Repulse Bay not until a month later. In the big lakes the ice cannot drift away, as there is only an outlet through the narrow channels of the rivers. Like strange anacronisms these white icefloes lie in the summer heat of the landscape. The ice drifts to and fro in the lakes until it is broken into smaller pieces by waves and wind; but not until the latter part of July — in some years even the beginning of August — can the H. B. C. coast boats sail from Baker Lake to Chesterfield.
In summer there are many seals on the ice, the result being that about a third of the Caribou Eskimos make their way to the sea between Chesterfield Inlet and McConnell River. A few more Eskimos come to the southern, alluvial coast than to the northern, rocky coast, but this is not the result of any geographic valuation of the coast. It is merely due to the numerical condition of the tribes, and in these we are dealing with such small figures that the slightest change may disturb the balance.
July is the mid-summer period. The night is only a brief twilight with fantastical violet cumulus clouds and a sky that in the north is a fiery yellow gleam of flame. The waste stretches boundlessly on the far horizon, with great, evenly rising plains and delicately drawn hills. The country is alive in the summer night, it does not sleep. A bird, invisible to the eye, calls from one place. The ptarmigan comes with a swir, alights and bleats its alluring cackle. A snowy owl sits. on a big stone, on the watch for lemmings, and far away from one of the innumerable, glistening pools sounds the insane wailing of the loon ...
