“Now Churchill is the coldest inhabited place on this continent, with a mean winter temperature of -20.5° Fahr., and it is not likely that any part of the Barren Lands has a mean winter temperature of -30° Fahr., while Yakutsk, a town of about five thousand inhabitants in Siberia, has a mean winter temperature of -40.4° Fahr., and many other places in Northern Asia have a still lower mean, one place having a mean winter temperature of -50.2° Fahr. Most of these places have, however, a higher summer temperature than is found in the Canadian Barren Lands, and are therefore within the limit of woods.
“It can thus be seen that Europeans and Asiatics live and thrive in a much more rigorous climate than is found even in the most inhospitable parts of northern Canada, and that therefore the climate does not offer any insuperable objection to settlement in that country.”
Present Inhabitants Two Thousand Eskimos.
According to Mr. J. B. Tyrrell (paper before the British Association): “The permanent inhabitants of the Barren Lands are about two thousand Eskimos, who live either along the coast or on the banks of Kazan and Dubawnt rivers. They subsist entirely by hunting and fishing, and the animals on which they live are chiefly the Barren Land caribou and several species of seals. Besides these, about five hundred Chipewyan Indians usually penetrate a short distance into the Barren Lands from the south during the summer in their annual deer-hunt, but they retire southward into the forest to spend the winter.”
Like the Tundra of Siberia.
Doctor (later Sir John) Richardson was one of the first explorers to draw attention to the resemblance of the Barren Lands to the tundra of Siberia. In one place the learned scientist writes:—“The general character of the tundra of the east of Siberia is like that of the American barren grounds.”
Again he writes:—“In character the Siberian tundra is very similar to the American ones. Thus Wrangell says,—‘When one coming from the naked, frozen moss-tundra reaches the valleys of the Aninuik, which are sheltered by mountains from the prevailing cold winds, and where birches, poplars, willows, and low creeping junipers (Juniperus prostratus) grow, he thinks himself transported to Italy.’ ”
All who have visited the Barren Grounds agree that the prospect of agriculture ever being successfully followed there on a large scale is very slight, unless it is proved possible to develop the breeding of the Lapland reindeer and make of it a profitable meat raising industry, or is found practicable to domesticate the native reindeer or caribou. Some of the scientific explorers, however, think there is a prospect of a certain amount of barley agricultural produce, even grain of hardy varieties being raised in one part—the valley of the Thelon.
Limited Agriculture Possible.
Mr. J. W. Tyrrell says in his report:—“The Thelon valley, though affording good grazing ground for musk-oxen and caribou, can scarcely be looked upon as a desirable agricultural district, although I judge from the growth and great variety of plants observed there, that some of our cereals and most of our hardy vegetables could be grown in the Thelon valley.”