Cliffs Of Bylot Island.
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.
