The Eskimo believed that it was the white fur trader who had armed the Adlât with these “fire-tubes” against him, hence the original hostility of these people towards all other white folk. As a matter of fact, the servants of the Hudson Bay Company did all they could, in those early days, to protect the Eskimo against the Indian, and to bring about an understanding between the native races of the great territory they exploited. It was, however, this original fear and prejudice which must be held accountable for any barbarity white men have met with since at the hands of the Eskimo (unless indeed the instance has been one of recently and immediately provoked reprisals). For the most part, it certainly holds good that the inhabitants of the Arctic north have been the least dangerous “savages” explorers have ever met. There are some conflicting accounts on this subject in the annals of arctic voyagers; but as a very general rule the Eskimo have been found to be a kindly and harmless folk. Seldom as they wage war against others, seldom as they can be provoked or even terrified into self-defence (except by flight), they never fight, in a collective sense, among themselves. This is not due to effeminacy or cowardice, for no one could connect any such suspicion with the hardy intrepid natives of the most pitiless regions of the earth. It is simply that the Eskimo are not made in the mould too common to all the other races of mankind—they are not fighters. Most people, it has been said, regard war as a reversion to primitive instincts. But some historians hold that war—organised war, as we understand the term to-day—was not primaeval in its origin. It was unknown to early man, and it is unknown to early man’s last representatives, such as the Black Fellows of Australia and the Eskimo of the Arctics, at the present time. The Eskimo can be doughty enough in single combat when necessity or custom require it of him; but generally speaking he is the most pacific being on earth. Where these people come within the sphere of practical British influence, they are treated somewhat on the same lines as the North American Indians, but without being gathered into Reservations. There is a Government Agent in charge of the tribe, and its material needs are provided for by the annual supply ship sent along the coast. It is generally the Agent, trading or Departmental, who extends the first handclasp of welcome to medical man or evangelist who betakes himself to the peoples of the Arctic. There have been, however, few travellers in Baffin Land, excepting, of course, the seamen who use its coast. Much of the country is unexplored. Probably the only whites who have penetrated it at all have been missionaries and explorers.