ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 129

head of the former and the teeth and gait of the latter. On the other hand,
few animals have such a restricted habitat. It ranges from the 65th. degree
of latitude north to the Arctic Ocean, and from Hudson Bay in the east to
the Coppermine River in the west. Outside of this extreme northeastern portion
of the new continent, it is to be found nowhere else in the world, except
perhaps in Grinnell Land and Northern Greenland. Whitney is responsible for
this qualification. But Richardson writes that “it does not exist in Greenland”’?,
though a little further on he admits having “read somewhere of a skull having
been found” there?. The latter author states also that “one... was procured
by Captain Beachey (sic for Beechey), from that very curious deposit of bones
in the frozen cliffs of Escholtz Bay of Beering’s Straits.” Richardson does
not give his authority for this statement. By scanning over Beechey’s Journal,
especially those passages of it that mention Escholtz Bay — as he spells the
name himself — | fail to find any confirmation of the same. Where the
mariner records his arrival at that spot, he gives indeed a description of the
geological formation and his eolithic finds that tallies with that referred to by
Richardson; but the bones discovered there were those of the elephant, not
of the musk-ox*. The latter animal has long ceased to go even as far west
as Mackenzie River.

Warburton Pike, who is well known for his love of sport under the
most awkward circumstances, thus describes their habitat: “There is nothing
striking or grand in the scenery, no big mountains or waterfalls, but a mono-
tonous snow-covered waste, without tree or scrub, rarely trodden by the foot
of the wandering Indian. A deathly stillness hangs over all, and the oppres-
sive loneliness weighs upon the spectator till he is glad to shout aloud to
break the awful spell of solitude. Such is the land of the musk-ox in snow-
time; here this strange animal finds abundance of its favourite lichens, and
defies the cold that has driven every other living thing to the woods for
shelter’ 4.

The musk-ox robes I have seen were of a dark brown with fine fleecy
under-hair, and as to size the natives estimate the flesh of a mature cow as
the equivalent of about three reindeer. The bull might be some 200 pounds
heavier®. They travel in herds of ten to twenty-five®, and, if attacked by dogs,
they invariably form a circle with calves inside, rumps together and heads
facing the enemy. Whitney, who writes after personal experience, is positive
on this point, and Richardson corroborates his assertions. But Pike seems no

* “Arctic Searching Expedition”, vol. I, p. 322.
? Ibid., p. 325.
° “Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific’, vol. I, p. 352.
“ «The Barren Grounds of Canada’, p. 107. London, 1892.
° Cf. “On Snow-Shoes to the Barren Grounds”, p. 224. My illustration of the musk-ox
is from a photograph of an actual specimen.
®° «W. Pike says he once saw a herd fully 100 head strong (Op. cit., p. 108).