SPRING JOURNEY IN A SKIN BOAT 193 



in six hours of May travel though your boots be water- 

 tight. 



At Herschel Island the mountains are only twenty or 

 thirty miles to the south but at Flaxman Island they are 

 ten or fifteen miles farther away. The spring heat takes 

 effect sooner on the mountain slopes than on the level 

 prairie and, accordingly, the more easterly rivers opened 

 earlier. On my last trip east I found the Firth River 

 open the 10th of May and the water from it spreading 

 in a wide fan over many square miles of sea ice just 

 west of Herschel Island. The Kugruak River at Flax- 

 man Island did not open till the middle of May. The 

 water from such a river flows several miles out on the ice, 

 perhaps six or eight, and finally meets a tide crack through 

 which it can join the sea beneath. These tide cracks 

 are formed where the shore ice that lies solidly on the 

 bottom meets the ice farther out that lies over deeper 

 water and rises and falls with the tides. These cracks 

 are kept open all winter by the ice movement and are 

 ready to receive the river water when the spring freshets 

 bring it to the ocean. 



Most travelers of the polar regions have remarked how 

 suddenly spring comes. It does come more rapidly than 

 in more southerly countries, but gradually nevertheless. 



There are many signs of coming spring besides the in- 

 creasing warmth that we dislike because it is accom- 

 panied by increasing cloudiness and a heavier and heavier 

 snowfall. The birds are one of these signs. A few kinds 

 have been there all winter — ptarmigan by the thousand, 

 hawks, owls and ravens by the dozen. The first snow 

 buntings appear on the coast early in April. If you were 

 far out on the sea ice where it is in rapid movement with 

 much open water between the cakes, you would have the 



