THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 345 



ago. At first it must have been a desirable land to them but the 

 desirability consisted entirely in the cattle. In a few years these 

 were killed off, whereupon the colonists either died of starvation 

 during an unlucky winter or returned to the more favorable islands 

 from which they had come. It is of course possible that after a 

 few decades had elapsed and the ovibos had had a chance to be- 

 come more numerous, a second migration might have come in to 

 remain for a few years. 



We know that Melville Island has been seen by the Victoria 

 Island Eskimos when they hunt on the north coast. No tradition 

 survives there to tell of their ever having crossed over to Melville 

 Island, but with its cliffs in plain sight there is no reason why a 

 few adventurous families might not do so any time. They may 

 easily do so in the near future, for in the course of our expedition 

 one Victoria Island Eskimo accompanied us there and discovered 

 for himself the abundance of the highly-valued polar cattle. 



On June 29th we came upon the only caribou seen on this trip 

 along the Melville Island coast. It was a yearling and therefore 

 thin, so we made no serious attempt to get it. That day also we 

 saw the first owl since the precedmg 20th of February when we 

 noticed one just north of Cape Kellett. We had noted in the fall 

 of 1914 that the owls which were very numerous in the summer 

 became gradually fewer towards Christmas and seeing one in Feb- 

 ruary really surprised us. So far as we know, their main food is 

 the lemming and these must be hard to get in wmter time. Still, 

 we occasionally see lemming tracks in any month of winter and 

 it is doubtless these stragglers the owls live on. 



Watching the owls in their lemmmg hunts I have marveled at 

 their intelligence but equally at their stupidity. An instance is a 

 short autumn day when I sat for several hours on a hill in south- 

 west Banks Island and studied through my field glasses the white 

 foxes and owls all about. Within a circle of a few miles were sev- 

 eral foxes, now hidden by hills or in ravines, now visible in the 

 open, hunting lemmings. On knolls here and there sat owls watch- 

 ing the foxes. 



There had been a four or six-inch fall of snow which lay as yet 

 untouched by wind, level and fluffy. Under this snow, tunneling 

 it and fondly believing themselves unobserved, the lemmings were 

 everywhere. The foxes moved about at a leisurely, elastic 

 trot. Every few minutes I could see one of them stop, cock his 

 head on one side, and listen. Possibly the senses of sight and smell 

 were also active, but certainly they gave primarily the impression 



