110 The White Bear ^ — XJrsiis Markhnus, 



" This animal swims excellently, and advances at a rate of three mliGS 

 an hour. During the summer season he principally resides in the ice-islands, 

 and leaves one to visit another, however great be the distance. If inter- 

 rupted while in the water, he dives and changes his course ; but he neither 

 dives very often, nor does he remain under water for a long time. Captain 

 Ross saw a polar bear swimming midway in Melville Sound, where the shores 

 were full forty miles apart, and no ice was in sight large enough for him to 

 have rested on." 



They have been seen on ice-islands two hundred miles distant from land, 

 and sometimes they are drifted to the shores of Iceland, or Norway, where 

 they are so ravenous as to destroy all the animals they find. Most com- 

 monly siich invaders are soon destroyed, as the natives collect in large num- 

 bers and commence an immediate pursuit, but frequently do not succeed in 

 killing them before many of their flocks are thinned. An individual polar 

 bear has occasionally been carried on the ice as fai- south as Nevv-foundland, 

 but this circumstance very rarely occurs. 



Generally the polar bear retreats from man : but when pursued and 

 attacked he always resents the aggression, and turns furiously on his enemy. 

 When struck at with a lance, he is very apt to seize and bite the staff in 

 two, or wrest it from the hands. Should a ball be fired at him, without 

 taking eflect in the head or heart, his rage is increased, and he seeks revenge 

 with augmented fury. It has been remarked that, when wounded and able 

 to make his escape, he applies snow to the wound, as if aware that cold 

 would check the flow of blood. 



A great majority of the fatal accidents following engagements with the 

 polar boar, have resulted from imprudently attacking the animal on the ice. 

 ScoRESBY, in his interesting narrative of a voyage to Greenland, relates an 

 instance of this kind. " A few years ago, when one of the Davis's Strait 

 whalers was closely beset among the ice at the ' south west,' or on the coast 

 of Labrador, a bear that had been for some time seen near the ship, at length 

 became so bold as to approach alongside, probably tcm,pted by the oflfal of 

 the provisions thrown oyerboard by the cook. At this time the people were 

 ail at dinner, no one being required to keep the deck in the then immovable 

 condition of the ship. A hardy fellow who first looked out, perceiv^ing the 

 bear so near, imprudently jumped upon the ice, armed only with a hand- 

 spike, with a view, it is supposed, of gaining all the honour of the exploit of 

 securing so fierce a visitor by himself. But the bear, regardless of such 

 weapons, and sharpened probably by hunger, disarmed his antagonist, and 

 seizing him by the back witii his powerful jaws, carried him off with such 

 celerity, that on his dismayed comrades rising from their meal and looking 

 abroad, he was so far beyond their reach as to defy their pursuit." 



In the morse or walrus this bear has an enemy of great power and 

 ferceness, with which he has at times dreadful combats, most generally 

 terminating in the defeat of the bear, as the walrus is armed with long tuskg, 

 capable of giving deadly wounds. The whale is also a perpetual enemy of 

 ^ polar bear, chasing him from the waters it frequents, and killing him by 



