Mtisk ox are regular swimmers ami can travel fast enough to set up boiv waves like tugboats. 



separates it from the Islands is also rugged but not nearly so 

 much so. On frozen Ellesmereland, Devon Island, and Bylot, the 

 sea is faced by cliffs, but the real mountains lie somewhat in- 

 land; along the east coast of Baffinland the true uplands are 

 even farther away from the sea. These coasts are also heavily 

 indented with inlets and fjords — the results of both gouging by 

 the ice glaciers, which can dig below sea level, and the sinking 

 of the land, plus the rising of the waters. These islands are more 

 barren than the coastal strip of West Greenland, but they too 

 support a remarkably varied vegetation. The tiny dwarf willows, 

 Arctic heathers, and cinquefoils cluster each in their own pre- 

 ferred microcosm, some facing the wind, some hiding from it, 

 some blooming where the snow melts first, others where it melts 

 last — a wonderful tapestry of growing things as perfectly inte- 

 grated with the environment as it could possibly be. 



The other Islands (of the Canadian Arctic), as they are now 

 simply and conveniently called, form a most peculiar territory. 

 For most purposes the salt-water lanes between them may be 

 ignored and all of them treated as a whole, though the moun- 

 tainous strip from Ellesmereland to southern Baffinland is some- 

 what distinct. Taken together, they form a great triangle, the 

 northern two-thirds of which is snow-covered or utterly barren. 

 The southern portion is snow- and ice-free in summer, from 

 about late July till mid-October, and is for the most part covered 

 with true tundra interspersed with barren lands — which is to say, 

 naked rock. South of the Islands there are two huge triangles on 

 the mainland — the Keewatin and Ungava peninsulas — which are 



nonetheless Arctic lands and are covered with the same tundra. 

 On tundra lands there is a thin, acid, airless, and sodden top- 

 soil that melts in the summer and, under this, a greater or les- 

 ser depth of frozen soil or permafrost, which we will consider 

 later. There are, however, also large areas of sandy and abso- 

 lutely moistureless soil. From the air, especially at certain times 

 when the snow is melting off or the lowly vegetation is beginning 

 to leaf, it may be seen that this whole land is covered with one 

 or another kind of an almost geometrically perfect giant grid. 

 This is often so precise that it is hard to believe that it is not 

 man-made but is the result of the purely natural physical forces 

 of frost and melt. In this land you will also find other geometric- 

 looking arrangements, such as "ditches" running for miles in 

 perfect alignment, and whole islands completely covered by a 

 checkerboard of hexagonal, rhomboidal, or other conformations 

 of either enormous or foot-sized dimensions. These sharp rock 

 ridges or earth bowls — some round with small blisters in the 

 middle — cover the whole earth often for miles, just like the 

 patterns formed by a shattered automobile windshield. As 

 a result of the slight differences in elevation between these ridges 

 and depressions, and the resultant variations in soil moisture 

 content, exposure to sunlight, and other factors, different plants 

 grow on eacli level and so accentuate the differences among 

 these bizarre patterns by color, tone, and shade. Here the rock 

 surface of the land is as brittle as ice and often behaves not 

 unlike that substance: and when the rocks do crack, they may 

 make noises like gunfire. 



24 



