Thus the very modern and limited story of Baffin Land trade, etc., is the only civilised history it has. As for its native history, we might refer almost without qualification to any archæological account of the fur-clad men of the stone age. The similarity of the Eskimo’s implements, their ways of life, their primitive pursuits, their domestic and tribal management, to those of the neolithic age, has often been pointed out. The only other notices of the Baffin Islanders to be found are those which occur in the journals of explorers’ voyages, such as Captain Parry’s second expedition of 1821, in which we get a lively account of the junketings on the ice between the “savages” and the crews of the “Fury” and the “Hecla.” It was during this voyage that the leader fell in with an Eskimo girl whose name should be rescued from oblivion. Igloolik added to many native graces and accomplishments a bright intelligence and so good an idea of hydrography and of the seacoasts in the neighbourhood of the “Fury’s” moorings, that the Captain utilised the charts and drawings she made for him in the further prosecution of his expedition, finding them always reliable and mainly correct. He afterwards called an island by her name. Ten years later, Captain John Ross received the same sort of assistance during his second Arctic voyage, from another Eskimo woman named Teriksin. She revised and corrected for him the sketches of the surrounding coasts furnished by some of the men of the tribe. The chart which illustrates Chapter XII is just such another as Igloolik and Teriksin might have drawn. It was furnished from memory by a man called Pitsoolak, and is very fairly correct. The hunters and fishers of the Arctic are taught as children to memorise the contours of the coast, all landmarks, and every “blaze” of any sort a trail might afford. They have no unit of measurement, except the “sleep,” i.e., the length of a day’s march and its interval of rest. CHAPTER V THE BUILDING OF THE VILLAGE