NORTHERN RKGION. 17 



tie roche is the most capable of supporting life. Here winter 

 reigns with stern rigour for ten months in the year; and even 

 ia summer biting blasts, hail -storms, and rain frequently 

 occur. Yet in this inhospitable region numerous herds of 

 reindeer, musk-oxen, and other mammalia find subsistence 

 during the brief summer, as do partridge and numerous birds 

 of various species. 



Here the Esquimaux lives in his skin-tent during the 

 warmer months, and in his snow-hut in winter, existing on 

 the seals which he catches with his harpoon, the whales 

 occasionally cast on shore, and the bears, deer, and smaller 

 animals he entraps. 



The numerous rivers flowing from the mountain- ridges 

 mostly make their way northward. The Mackenzie, the 

 largest and most western, rising in the Great Slave and Great 

 Bear Lakes, falls, after a course of many hundred miles, into 

 the Polar Sea. The Coppermine River, rising in Point Lake, 

 makes its course in the same direction ; while eastward, the 

 great Fish or Back River, flowing from the same lake as the 

 iirst mentioned stream, reaches the ocean many hundred miles 

 away from it, at the lower extremity of Bathurst Islet. 

 It runs rapidly in a tortuous course of 530 geographical 

 miles through an iron-ribbed country, without a single tree 

 on the whole line of its banks, expanding here and there into 

 five large lakes, and broken by thirty-three falls, cascades, 

 and rapids ere it reaches the Polar Sea. Not far from its 

 mouth rises the barren rocky height of Cape Beaufort. 



It was down this stream that Captain Back, the Arctic 

 explorer, made his way, but was compelled to return on 

 account of the inclemency of the weather and the difficulty of 

 finding fuel ; the only vegetation which he could discover 



(379) 2 



