The exploration of Southampton Island, Hudson Bay. Section 1 - Prefatory, reasons for undertaking the study. Section 2 - General introduction, description of Southampton Island. Section 3 – Bibliography

Abstract

Many an explorer, eager to add a little to what we call the sum of human knowledge, or dreaming of wealth and fame, has sailed the polar seas. Many a scientist has fought his way across tundra and through ice-fields hoping to conquer and dispel the apparent inscrutability of the frozen ocean, the ice-covered wastes, and the aurora-curtained sky. Many a bird-lover, ashamed that we should know so little about the nesting-habits of some of our common migrant species, has made his way to the inhospitable Barren Grounds, or to the remote Arctic islands, confident of finding there in their summer homes creatures, whose domain is the wide world itself, and whose seasonal flights take them indeed "from zone to zone." All these, explorers, scientists, and bird-lovers, acknowledge the charm of the Far North; but none can precisely explain it. One finds one's self while in the Arctic wondering why one should leave a pleasant home for such a cold and savage land, and how, indeed, any race of beings, be they ever so rugged, can continue to remain there. One leaves the Arctic wondering whether one can again resume the noisy intricacies of the over-organized civilization, to which one must return. Safe home from the northern seas, one recoils a little at the thought of winter-long isolation, of frozen face and hands, of insufficiency of food; but one finds one's self dreaming, nevertheless, of returning some day to the magnificent, unquestioning, impersonal friendliness of the tundra. I went to Southampton Island partly because, more than once having been under the spell of the clean-edged beauty of the Arctic, I felt that I must return. In the year 1920, through the kindness of Mr. W. E. Clyde Todd, Curator of Ornithology at the Carnegie Museum, I had the opportunity of studying the Labrador coast from Battle Harbor to Cape Chidley as a member of one of the expeditions of the Carnegie Museum. I was wofully untrained for work in the field, but Mr. Todd was patient, even indulgent. Not only did I learn a great deal from him about field technique, but I caught

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