406 
for brief periods in summer to hunt caribou and musk-oxen and to 
fish in the lakes and rivers. It was the greater abundance of sea 
mammals and fish in the waters of Alaska and Greenland that 
occasioned the greater concentration of ]K)pulation in those regions. 
In Arctic Canada sea mammals wei'e abundant in certain localities 
and scarce in others, owing largely to the conditions and movements 
of the sea-ice.^ The Eskimo, therefore, made the localities of 
abundance their centres, and moved away from them only for special 
reasons — to fish and hunt inland, or to procure wood in distant forests 
for making boats, sleds, weapons, ami tlie various requirements of 
their households. 
We observed in our last chapter that the Chipewyan and Yellow- 
knife Indians at the eastern margins of Great Bear and Great Slave 
lakes trusted for their food supply, their clothing, and coverings for 
their tents to the enormous herds of barren-ground caribou; and we 
naturally ask why the Eskimo did not follow their example, why 
they clung to the seashore and devoted most of their energies to the 
capture of sea mammals. The reason was that the barren-ground 
caribou migrated seasonally; every spring they moved northward 
to their summer pasture grounds and fawning districts, and at the 
^ Heucf llie ruined hoiises in llio Arctic aiTlii|H'!a(ro lie niiiinlv fui llic south sides of the islauds. 
which were less blocked uiih ice tIkui the norrhern ennsis. The K-'kiiiio abandoned this rcKion se\'cral 
centuries ago, I'lntbably owing to a gradiiul ujilift of the land that left the surround, ng waters too 
shallow for the jnissage of the largf’r sea inaninials. 
