The scenery everywhere is typical of the “Barrens,” the “Bad Lands of the North.” In winter, a featureless waste of snow, where in that dark season “come those wonderful nights of glittering stars and northern lights playing far and wide upon the icy deserts; or where the moon, here most melancholy, wanders on her silent way through scenes of desolation and death. In these regions the heavens count for more than elsewhere; they give colour and character, while the landscape, simple and unvarying, has no power to draw the eye.” (Nansen.) In summer, when the iron grip of ice is relaxed around the frozen coast, snow may disappear from the interminable wastes of rounded granite hills which are a feature of the interior. The effect of this endless succession of low bare elevations is one of “appalling desolation.” The long, high-pitched howl of the wolf, the ultimate note of the wilderness, falls occasionally upon the ear of the twilight camper. This, and the cry of the loon from the lakes, with the crowing bleat of the ptarmigan in the low scrub, are the chance evening sounds (of spring and summer) in the Barrens. The country generally is mountainous and of a hilly and barren aspect. In some districts comparatively level Laurentian areas occur, where immense herds of reindeer roam in the summer. At this season the ranges have a dark or nearly black appearance, owing to the growth of lichens upon them, but this sombre character is often relieved in valleys and on hill-sides by strips and patches of green, due to grasses and sedges in the lower bottoms, and a variety of flowering plants on sheltered slopes exposed to the sun. The high interior of Baffin Land, lying just north of Cumberland Sound, is apparently all covered with ice, like the interior of Greenland. Around the margins of this ice cap the general elevation above the sea is about 5,000 feet, and it rises to about 8,000 feet in the central parts. Large portions of the northern interior are over 1,000 feet above the sea, so that vast regions of the country may be said to be truly mountainous. There are no trees or shrubs of any kind in Baffin Land. Of Arctic flowers, a small yellow poppy seems to be the hardiest and most widespread. Even in those parts where desolation seems to reign supreme, this poppy (Papaver radicatum), and a tiny purple saxifrage (Saxifraga appositifolia) can generally be discerned. There are coarse grasses growing in scant patches, and immense tracts of reindeer moss, upon which the cariboo entirely subsist.