THE ARCTIC HIGHLANDERS. 175 



landers," who extend their wanderings to the very Pole itself. Such 

 a people will he completely isolated, they will be living entirely 



on their own resources — far more so even than the " Arctic High- 

 landers," since the North "Water has been for the last forty years 

 visited by whalers and explorers : and a full account of the habits, 

 the mode of life, and the language of so isolated a people will be 

 to many of ns among the must valuable results of the contemplated 

 Arctic Expedition. 



I have thus endeavoured to point out the routes which were 

 probably taken by the ancestors of the Greenlanders, and of the 

 supposed denizens of the Pole, in their long march from the Siberian 

 coast. 



Ox the Arctic Highlanders. 



The country of the Arctic Highlanders, the most northern known 

 people in the world, is that strip of land on the eastern side of Baffin's 

 Bay and Smith Sound, which is bounded on the south by the 

 Melville and on the north by the great Humboldt glacier; and in 

 describing a strange and very interesting tribe, it will be well, in the 

 first place, to enumerate the voyages which have brought this region 

 to our knowledge, and to examine what manner of country it is 

 which supplies a home for this outlying piquet of humanity. 



On the 1st of July, 1016, Baffin steered the little Discovery, of 

 fifty-five tons, into the open water at the head of Baffin's Bay, 

 which " anew revived the hope of a passage." The old navigator 

 refrained from scattering the names of all the great men of his 

 day and of all his friends and acquaintances round the head of 

 the hay. lie only gave names to nine of the most prominent 

 features — namely, Cape Dudley Digges, Wblstenholme Sound and 

 Island, Whale Sound, Hakluyt Island, the Carey Islands, and Smith, 

 Jones, and Lancaster Sounds. lie anchored in Wblstenholine and 

 Whale Sounds; butitis no1 stated that he landed, and as the weather 

 was had, ho probably did not, but he communicated with the in- 

 habitants. No doubt, too, they were watching him with extreme 

 astonishment, from behind rocks, as is their wont, and the ap- 

 pearance of this strange apparition in those silent seas may have 

 been the subject of a tradition in the I 



B iffin, then, was the firsl navigator who forced his way through the 

 ice-barrier drifting south, and entered the " North Water;" bul ii 

 was left to Sir John I loss to di c iver the existence of in ha I -it ants on 



