MAMMALS. 255 



The Eskimo of Saint Lawreuce Island and the American coast are well supplied with fire- 

 arms, which they use when bear-hunting. In winter, north of the straits, the bears often become 

 thin and very savage from lack of food. 



A number of Eskimo on the Alaskan coast show frightful scars obtained in contests with 

 them iu wintei'. One man, who came on board the Corwin, had the entire skin and flesh torn 

 from one side of his head and face, including the eye and ear, yet had escaped and recovered. 



One incident was related to me which occurred near Point Hope during the winter of 1880-'81. 

 Two men went out from Point Hope during one of the long winter nights to attend to their seal- 

 aets, which were set through holes in the ice. While at work near each other, one of the men 

 heard a bear approaching over the frosty snow, and having no weapon but a small knife, and the 

 bear being between him and the shore, he threw himself upon his back on the ice and waited. The 

 bear came up in a few moments and smelled about the man from head to foot, and finally pressed 

 his cold nose against the man's lips and nose and sniffed several times; each time the terrified 

 Eskimo held his breath until, as he afterwards said, his lungs nearly burst. The bear suddenly 

 heard the other man at work, and listening for a moment he started towards him at a gallop, while 

 the man he left sprang to his feet and ran for his life for the village and reached it safely. At 

 midday, when the sun had risen a little above the horizon, a large party went out to the spot and 

 found the bear finishing his feast upon the other hunter and soon dispatched him. Cases similar 

 to this occur occasionally all along the coast where the bear is found in winter. 



In July and August, 1881, while the (Jorwin was cruising among the ice near Wrangel and 

 Herald Islands, we saw a considerable number of these animals and killed several of them. They 

 were usually upon the ice, and as we drew near made off at a lumbering gallop. Although clumsy 

 in their motions, yet they progressed with surprising speed across the rough and broken surface 

 of the ice. They are difiicult to kill unless hit in the head, and a gun of heavy caliber is required 

 to do good work. 



A female killed by the writer, the skin of which is in the National Museum, must have 

 weighed 1,000 pounds, and the male, which I shot a few minutes earlier and lost among the float- 

 ing jce, was very much larger. With this female was a yearling cub, and when the pursuit became 

 pressing and the cub began to tire, she swam behind it with her fore paws one on each side of its 

 back, thus shielding it from danger and urging it along. She continued to do this even after a 

 ball had shattered her spine above her hips, and until wounded in various places and finally 

 disabled. 



They swim boldly far out to sea, and while the Corwin lay at anchor off the ice during a heavy 

 gale in August, a bear came swimming off to us iu the face of the sleet and wind. He had prob- 

 ably smelled our smoke and came off to reconnoiter, but a warm reception changed his mind and he 

 turned and vanished in the fog again. The flesh of the bears we killed was tough and rank. They 

 are guided more by scent than by eyesight, and frequently swim silently along the edge of the ice 

 searching for their prey. Fiudi.ig a seal basking on the edge of the ice, they rise suddenly 

 between it and the water, crush its skull with a blow of the paw, and feast upon it at leisure. 

 The whalers claim that they capture fair-sized walruses by creeping up to the latter, while they 

 are asleep on the ice, and dragging them awaj' from the water. 



With the possible exception of the Californian Grizzly, these bears are unquestionably the 

 most powerful of their kind. In summer they rarely attack man, and usually fly from him. One 

 old whaling captain, who has since been lost with ship and crew among the ice, was surprised by 

 one while he was cutting tusks from some walruses on the ice; the bear came at him open-mouthed, 

 but a blow from the ax laid his skull opeu and closed the fight. 



There is no record of the White Bear on the Aleutian Islands, where it is unknown ; and, except 

 on Saint Lawreuce and Saint Matthew Islands, they are virtually unknown south of Bering 

 Straits iu summer. 



