THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 343 



served since half a million years ago, provided that most of that 

 time it had remained embedded in frozen earth to be exposed and 

 thawed out only recently. 



Without landing on Fitzwilliam Owen Island we struck SW by 

 W from Eight Bears Island for the NW corner of Emerald Isle, 

 which could not be seen from sea level but was plain when viewed 

 from the top of the island. The next day the sledges traveled along 

 the west coast of Emerald Isle about half a mile from shore while 

 I walked overland. We would have liked to stop and complete 

 the survey begun by McClintock but the late season forbade. The 

 island was well supplied with grass and moss but not as exception- 

 ally as McClintock seems to have wanted to imply by calling it 

 Emerald Isle. It is easy to see from his record that up to this 

 period of his career as an explorer he had seen little if any low or 

 rolling land in summer but had been confined in his summer experi- 

 ence to such rocky lands as Melville Island. Most of the explorers 

 who have been in Melville Island comment on the richness of vege- 

 tation there. This is in contrast with our account, for we find it 

 more rocky and with less vegetation to the square mile than almost 

 any other land known to us. This merely means that most other 

 explorers had seen no other arctic land in summer and assumed it 

 to be exceptionally rich in vegetation merely because it contained 

 any at all. 



Mecham may have thought that he had found a great exception 

 to ordinary arctic conditions when he wrote for Melville Island, 

 ''Sent the sledge across the bay and walked around myself upon a 

 perfect field of grass and moss much resembling a rich meadow. 

 Several musk oxen and reindeer grazing. A large flock of snowy 

 geese flew over." * 



This was indeed a great exception to arctic lands as they are 

 supposed to be, but not an exception to arctic lands as they are. 

 But naturally men brought up in such lands as England were in- 

 capable of imagining when they were traveling over the snows of 

 winter that under them were grass and moss. They noted these 

 onl}'- in summer. Had they done much winter overland traveling 

 they would have seen the grass even at that season, but practically 

 all the exploring which put on the map the islands north of Canada 

 was done by sledges following the coast, touching the land chiefly 

 at the promontories and with only rare excursions upon it. To 

 this Melville Island has been the chief exception, for from Parry 



* "Further Papers Relative to the Recent Arctic Expeditions in Search 

 of Sir John Franklin," London, 1855, p. 533. 



