The weather was generally good, and the sensation of freedom which we derived from the limitless land was as invigorating as the wide-ranging life we led. When we found ourselves in the territory of a new wolf family we would make camp and explore the surrounding plains for as long as was required in order to make the acquaintance of the group. We were never lonely, despite the immensity and solitude of the country, for the caribou were always with us. Together with their attendant flocks of herring gulls and ravens, they imparted a sense of animation to what might otherwise have seemed a stark enough landscape. This country belonged to the deer, the wolves, the birds and the smaller beasts. We two were no more than casual and insignificant intruders. Man had never dominated the Barrens. Even the Eskimos, whose territory it had once been, had lived in harmony with it. Now these inland Eskimos had all but vanished. The little group of forty souls to which Ootek belonged was the last of the inland people, and they were all but swallowed up in this immensity of wilderness.
