114 On the trail of vanishing birds 



by a troop of Eskimos who marched up to the door and started in 

 without ceremony. D'Arcy intercepted them and sent them away 

 after exchanging a few words in their own tongue. It seemed that 

 they were merely reviving a recently established routine that in 

 the last few years had followed the arrival of an airplane, which, 

 even in 1948, was a rare event at Coppermine. Each native was 

 carrying in his hands a piece of crude copper, just as he had picked 

 it up in the vicinity of the settlement. They wanted to trade them 

 to us for dollars! Very enterprising people. After sending the 

 Eskimos off, with assurances that we would be delighted to trade 

 with them (though in a very small way!) later on, we sat and 

 talked until far past midnight. 



Over the next two days we were busy flying, going west within 

 sight of Darnley Bay and Cape Parry, where the Melville Moun- 

 tains rise close above the sea, and then east, over the rugged musk- 

 ox country to Bathurst Inlet. This coast constitutes an important 

 segment of the Northwest Passage. Dolphin and Union Strait, 

 which we flew over in passing between Victoria Island and the 

 mainland, was first seen by Richardson (in 1826) and named after 

 the two boats of his party. And through these same waters passed 

 Amundsen in the Gjoa on the first east-to-west voyage all the way 

 through (1905). The tundra between the Melville Mountains 

 and Coronation Gulf is very beautiful, but almost lifeless com- 

 pared with that we had worked on farther west between the 

 Mackenzie and the Anderson. A few scattered pairs of whistling 

 swans outnumbered everything else. We saw one tundra wolf, 

 almost white in color, and, near the shore, some glaucous gulls and 

 old-squaw ducks. The river mouths are narrow and choked with 

 gravel. On the tundra proper there are many outcroppings of 

 limestone rock and scattered areas on which many loose rocks 

 are strewn helter-skelter across the rolling slopes. To the east we 

 flew over some of the roughest country we had ever seen. From 

 Stapylton Bay to Tree River are massive flows of basaltic lava, 

 superimposed over the limestone. The slope of these lava flows is 

 toward the north, with sheer cliffs to the south, some of them 

 magnificent, like illustrations by Gustave Dore. Beyond Tree River 

 the region is a solid floor of sterile-looking, Pre-Cambrian rock, 



