Of the whalers and traders who followed in the wake of the explorers, the Scottish seamen have been the most persistent. Scotch vessels continue, to-day, to visit the Arctic every year. They sail from home in early summer, cross the North Atlantic, work their way up Davis’ Strait, and, (unless they winter on the coast of Baffin Land or Greenland), return to Scotland late in “the fall.” Sometimes the practice was to make the passage, generally through open water, from Dundee to St. John’s, spend some weeks upon the sealing grounds, then return to refit at the Newfoundland port for a whaling cruise farther north in Lancaster Sound. Having secured their cargo of seal skins and oil, they return home. The vessels of the Dundee whaling fleet are designed and built for navigation in northern seas. The hull is of wood, on account of its resisting power where pressed by ice, and the hardwood (“greenheart”) sheathing minimises the abrasions caused by conflict with the jagged edges of the floes. The ship is immensely braced by stout cross beams inside. The cutwater is protected by iron bands or plates, to enable her to withstand the heavy strain of the ice. She is barque rigged (i.e., a square rigged vessel, having yards on the foremast and mainmast, but not on the mizzen mast), and fitted with steam, to enable her to proceed during a calm, to shear her way through ice, or to enter and leave harbour independently of wind or tide. On all other occasions she depends upon her sails. A whaler fitted after this fashion is called an “auxiliary steam vessel.” She sails, however, much faster than she can steam. She carries about 500 tons of coal. Many of these tried and tested Scottish whaling ships have been bought up by the leaders of Arctic and Antarctic exploring expeditions, and remodelled and refitted for the scientific uses to which they would be put, and have done yeoman service in the assault on the Poles. Of late years the Hudson Bay Company (of historic and ubiquitous enterprise in Canada), have established posts on the southern shores of Baffin Land, (opposite to that northernmost region of the bleak Labrador known as Ungava), so that their ships, which sail from Montreal as annual supply ships for all the Company’s “Forts” and “Factories” along the Canadian coasts, have points of call along Hudson Strait en route for Hudson Bay itself and the fur ports of that vast inland sea. The Scotch whaling industry has various agents posted in many a bleak, un-heard of spot along the icebound littoral of the Eskimo countries, whose duty it is to collect and store the pelts brought in by the natives—employed by the agent—and ship them away annually or bi-annually, as the case may be.