Baffin Land, or Baffin Island—the country with which this book has to do—is an immense portion of the Canadian Arctic archipelago lying between latitude 62° and 72° N. By far the greater part of it extends north of the Arctic Circle, while its southern-most cape touches the latitude of the Faroe Islands, ’twixt the Shetlands and Iceland, in our own more familiar waters. The whole country lies far beyond the northernmost limit of trees, although it is not without an Arctic flora of its own. Baffin Sea, or Baffin Bay (that stretch of the North Atlantic Ocean which, beyond Davis Strait, divides the west coast of Greenland from North America), was discovered by the navigator William Baffin in 1615. Hence the name of the country. Discredit was thrown throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on Baffin’s work in the north; and, after him, Arctic exploration ceased for about two centuries. Then Sir John Ross verified Baffin’s observations in 1818, and many of them became the bases of later expeditionary enterprise. A glance at the map shows how the country lies. To the north of it, beyond the whaling grounds of Lancaster Sound, Devon Island is the next stretch of the poleward tapering continent. The Gulf of Bothnia and Fox Channel divide it on the west from the enormously broken coasts of the North West Territories. “The territory now known as Baffin Land was, until about 1875, supposed to consist of different islands, known as Cockburn Island, Cumberland Island, Baffin’s Land, Sussex Island, Fox Land, etc. It seems to be now established that these are all connected and that there is but one great island, comprising them all, to which the name of Baffin Land has been given. It forms the northern side of Hudson Strait.... It has a length of about 1,005 English statute miles, with an average breadth of 305 miles, its greatest width being 500 and its least 150 miles. Its area approximates 300,000 square miles, and it therefore comprises about one tenth of the whole Dominion. It is the third largest island in the world, being exceeded only by Australia and Greenland” (Annual Report of Geolog. Survey of Canada, 1898.) It is an entirely Arctic country, immediately north of which runs the polar limit of human habitation.