During the night much field-ice and many icebergs were passed as we steamed along the shores. Next morning at eleven o’clock, having rounded Cape Graham Moore, we came to an Eskimo encampment just inside Button point on the north side of the entrance to Ponds inlet. A landing was made at the mouth of a small stream, on the clay banks of which were located thirteen cotton and skin tents of these natives. All the able-bodied men were away in the whaleboats, either at Erik harbour, on the south side of the inlet, or some distance up it. There were a large number of women and children who, with a few sick men, completely filled a whaleboat in which they visited the ship in search of food. Many were sick with a disease resembling typhoid-pneumonia, being troubled by internal bleeding and a high fever.

We secured the services of a very intelligent man as pilot to the place some miles up the inlet where the Scotch whalers were anchored. From him we learned that the sloop Albert had wintered in Erik harbour, and that two small whales had been captured by natives in her boats during the early summer. Continuing our way up the inlet, a second encampment of six tents was passed about six miles beyond Button point. From the pilot we learned that the total native population about Ponds inlet comprised thirty-five families, or one hundred and forty-four persons. The only other band on the northern shores of Baffin island lived at Admiralty inlet, and does not exceed forty persons in all. Members of this band annually visit Ponds inlet to trade for the necessary supplies of ammunition, knives and other articles to be obtained from the whalers. At this time over one-half of the population of Ponds inlet were away inland to the southwest after a supply of deerskins for winter clothing, and would not return before the snow fell. The deer country is free from snow during the summer, and consists partly of rolling country, with a few high hills, but principally of a plain, cut by many streams and dotted with numerous lakes, the deer feeding on the grass and shrubs which are plentiful in the interior.

Bylot island is everywhere high and rough, and supports few deer except in the northeastern interior. The ice-cap, seen everywhere from the coast, does not extend far inland, where much of the land is bare in summer. The natives of Ponds inlet frequently cross to Fox channel and Repulse bay. During the past winter a party returning from the latter place brought letters from the whaling station at Repulse bay. They also occasionally cross to North Somerset, where of late years musk-oxen have been killed. This journey is at rare intervals continued across Lancaster sound to North Devon, where many deer and musk-oxen are found along the western side, while bears and walrus are plentiful among the ice of Wellington channel. In the winter all congregate at Button point, where the early part of the season is spent in houses built half into the ground, the low walls being made of boulders and whalebones cemented together with clay and sods, the roof being a portion of the summer tent. The ordinary snowhouse is used, as in other places, after the snow falls and until the late spring. During the winter food is obtained by killing narwhals and occasional seals and walrus in the open water at the edge of the solid ice near the mouth of the inlet. The whales come in July and sport about the mouth of the inlet until the ice breaks up, when they either follow the solid edge in its retreat up the inlet, or pass southward along the coast. In former years at least half of the whales taken by the Scotch whaling fleet were captured in the vicinity of Ponds inlet.

Owing to the northwest trend of the south shore the inlet gradually narrows as it is ascended, so that about fifteen miles above Button point, where a high rocky island terminates the southern point, the distance from shore to shore does not greatly exceed three miles. Farther westward it again broadens to twice that distance, and so continues until, turning north, it bounds the western side of Bylot island, where it is known as Navy Board inlet. Two long narrow bays pierce deep into the comparatively flat country of northern Baffin island from the neighbourhood of the bend, and a very fine salmon river empties into the more eastern bay. At the time of our visit the western end of the inlet was still filled with ice, making it impossible to visit this portion.

About ten miles beyond the narrows we came to anchor close under the steep clay banks of the drift plain on the south side of the inlet, and alongside the Scotch whalers Eclipse and Diana. Shortly after, we were visited by Captain Milne, Captain Adams and Mr. Much of the Albert.

A great deal of valuable information concerning whales and whaling, as well as about the ice currents and other points relating to the Arctics, was obtained from these gentlemen, all of whom have had many years’ experience in these regions. Much of this information has been used in the article on whaling, which is printed later in this report.

Finding that Arctic salmon were plentiful at the mouth of the little river about a mile from the ships, a small net was borrowed, and two boats were sent away to secure a supply of fresh fish. They returned loaded in an hour, having made but four casts of the net, in which over a thousand splendid fish were taken, varying in weight from three to ten pounds and aggregating at least 5,000 pounds.

A strong gale from the eastward blew until the evening of the 21st, with thick banks of fog covering the hills and filling the narrows, while the weather about the ships remained fine and clear. The Diana broke adrift during the gale and lost an anchor and thirty fathoms of chain. During our detention landings were made, and some trips were taken inland over the high, terraced plain, which extends far to the south and westward. The lowest terrace is two hundred feet above the sea. The surface of the plain is uneven, and deeply cut by the valleys of several small streams. The higher terraces flank the rocky hills to the eastward, the highest being fully six hundred feet above sea-level. On the plain and in the valleys there is considerable Arctic vegetation, from which a very interesting collection of plants was made by Dr. Borden.

A number of partly underground houses, similar to those already described, were found at the mouth of a small stream close to the anchorage. From several ancient graves along the banks of the stream a short distance from the houses a good collection of skulls was obtained.

When the gale abated, we started down the inlet for Erik harbour, accompanied by the other ships; the narrows once passed, we had to literally feel our way to the harbour through the dense fog, and anchored at its head alongside the whalers Balaena and Albert.

A landing was made to collect specimens of the granites and their associated rocks, which form the hills surrounding the harbour, and to visit the glacier which fills over two-thirds of its head. The glacier is a mile wide where it empties into the harbour, the ice along the front being about a hundred feet thick. As there is now very little motion to the ice, few icebergs break off, and those that do are too small to cause danger to the vessels in the anchorage. The southern corner of the bay is free of ice, and a small river discharges there from a southern valley. The glacier comes down the northwest valley, leaving its rocky wall about a mile inland; thence to the sea it is bounded by a steep ridge of glacial drift full of large boulders; the crest of this ridge gradually falls from two hundred feet to fifty feet as it approaches the water. There are large quantities of mud on and through the ice, so that all the streams discharging from it are very dirty. At some former time this glacier filled the entire valley extending to its mouth five miles away, and depositing against the rocky walls banks of boulder drift to a height of four hundred feet above the present level of the sea. There is no doubt that in the glacial period the size and extent of the glaciers of Baffin island were much greater than at present; at the same time the sharp outlines of the hills, together with the absence of that intense polishing and striation of the rocks so common in Labrador and more southern regions, point to a much thinner ice-cap during the glacial period in these northern regions than on the continental area to the south. This may be accounted for, in part, by a smaller precipitation from the narrow, ice-laden seas in the north.