A great chocolate-shaped hill bars the fiord, At its base squats a little group of white huts with a red flag waving above them. A cabined, gas-driven yacht appears around the point. Its cockpit is filled with cowled Eskimos: on its deck stand three white men, one in scarlet coat. A red flag, with "H.B.C." in white letters on its fly, flaps at the masthead. That means "Hudson Bay Company."
A few mornings later, at Lake Har-hour, Baffin Island, there is time to go short adventuring. Beyond is a hard, blue sky and glittering blue sea, dotted with snowy bergs and hundreds of white gulls; to right and left are the rolling black mountains veined with snow; ahead, the yellow sandstone hill, with the letters "H. B, C." picked out with whitewashed stones halfway up its nearly perpendicular face, and the white post houses strung along its base; not far behind, the fiord is lost in a wall of luminous fog.
A donkey engine is roaring above the open hold aft. The net dips into the depths, rises bulging with a catch of boxes and bags, swings outward and disappears. The turtle-shaped cargo boat is only half loaded. But behind it bobs an empty kayak. I untie the walrus thong and draw it up to the gangplank. An Eskimos lad follows me down to the water, steadies the small sealskin craft while I squeeze into the cockpit and pick up the long, double-bladed paddle.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.