An Anthropogeographical Study of the Origin of the Eskimo Culture. 77 
mountainous, and the mountains fall abruptly towards the sea, forming a 
highly rugged coast, while inland they sink towards the large lakes Amadjuak 
and Nettilling. The geological material of which Baffin Land is built up 
consists, as regards the mountain-tracts, of granite and gneiss, which are 
also predominant in the hilly headland. The level country, on the other 
hand, consists of silurian limestone. A continuous covering of land-ice does 
not occur; but ice-sheets usually cover the interior regions of the high land. 
Although this great high-land is by no means difficult of access from 
the sea, owing to the fact that the amount of ice carried by the current 
which flows southwards along the coast from the southern sounds in Baffin 
Bay is not so considerable as that carried along the east coast of Greenland, 
yet it has been very little visited by scientific expeditions. The discovery of 
the country dates right back to Martin Fropisuer, 1576, and his successors, 
Davis and Barrin, and afterwards the Dutch and the British carried on 
whale hunting in the neighbourhood of its coasts, but our knowledge, as 
regards its nature and inhabitants, dates exclusively from the 19th century. 
Since 1818, when Jonn Ross made his first voyage, Baffin Land has been 
visited by a series of ship-expeditions, whose object, however, was more to 
survey the coasts than to make geographical and ethnographical observations 
proper. From 1840 the whalers adopted a new mode of procedure; they 
established winter stations on land in Cumberland Sound, whence they could 
begin whaling immediately the ice broke up in the summer. Simultaneously, . 
they came into close contact with the Eskimo, whom they employed, and 
paid with European goods. An attempt made by the Moravian Brethren 
in 1857 to carry on missionary work in Baffin Land was abandoned, on the 
grounds, that it was impossible to get hold of the population so long as 
they were dependent on the whaling stations, which exercised a highly 
demoralising influence upon them. Of recent years a missionary station 
has, however, been maintained on Blacklead Island in Cumberland Gulf, 
where, more particularly, the well-known missionary and Eskimo-friend, 
E. Y. Peck, who is also known in Hudson Bay, has been working. As regards 
science, we owe almost nothing to the whalers, for the latter, as a rule, had 
no interests of this nature. But in this respect, also, some change has taken 
place recently. Both Franz Boas and A. P. Low have made much use of 
the information they obtained from American and Scottish whaling captains, 
and among these, Captain Groree Comer from East Haddon in Connecticut 
should especially be mentioned; his area of observation was, however, more 
particularly Hudson Strait and the western side of Hudson Bay. 
A better knowledge of Baffin Land and the Baffinlanders dates from 
C. F. Hatw’s stay near Frobisher Bay during 1860—62, and from the Howgate 
Expedition to Cumberland Sound in 1877—78. But none of these expeditions 
— the latter of which has been described by L. KumMtien — has yielded results 
which can be compared with those derived from the studies made by F. Boas 
at Cumberland Sound from August 1885 to August 1884. Boas, in a series 
of papers, has given a full account of his important voyage. 
