Up to the actual time of writing, Baffin Land has been held to be incapable of inland commercial development, but a Royal Commission of the Government of the Dominion have recently examined the possibility of establishing there a reindeer and muskox ranching industry. Their report has not yet been published, but already some steps are being taken to realise such a project. If this should have results, a new means of livelihood would be opened up to the Eskimo, at present employed exclusively by the whaling agents on the coast. But the natives are not herders, and in all probability Lapps would be brought over from northern Europe to initiate the industry. From this would ensue doubtless some racial modifications—probably quite inappreciable to any but those observers, like the present writer, used to the pure and unmixed Eskimo stock. In the present book, little account will be taken of those tribes which have been in contact with other races, like those of Alaska and Labrador, whence results hybridization or degeneration. The writer proposes to confine his attention entirely to the people of ancient, unmixed blood, and to depict their life and customs as uninfluenced by the forces of trade and civilisation, which are already threatening to usher in a new era and extinguish the last representatives of the “reindeer age.” From another point of view, however, Baffin Land should not pass without remark. It has certain undetermined mineral resources. At Cape Durban, on the 67th parallel, coal is known to exist, and graphite (plumbago) has been found abundant and pure in several islands. Again, pyrites and mica are all to be found in its rocks. The geology of the Arctic regions is, of course, a study in itself beyond the scope of this book. It may be of interest, however, to note that the two great distinctive bodies of rock to be observed in a country like Baffin Land are the granite and the finer grained, darker, basic rock. The ironstone from there is very similar to that brought from India to be smelted in England. The graphite might be mistaken for coal, but for its formation under geological conditions which could not have given rise to the latter. The two pyrites occur in the rocks of all ages; the one is a brassy yellow, very hard mineral, and the other a brilliant black stone (magnetic pyrites) looking much like a mass of loosely formed crystals. Garnets are also formed in several kinds of rock, but are chiefly to be found in the schist. As a rule, these little gems are far too much broken and split by the intense frost to be worth collecting. In the winter, the hardest rock is so split by the cold that every peculiarity of its composition can be clearly seen. The graphite can be chipped out with an axe and utilised very conveniently for writing.