THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 211 



into the water. This was a spice of prospective danger which kept 

 us from feeling the time monotonous. 



So soon as we felt certain our marooning would be protracted, 

 we commenced killing seals. There were a great many about, but 

 the mush ice in the leads made it difficult to secure them and after 

 several days of effort we had only three or four safe on the ice be- 

 side us. Then suddenly the food question was answered by the 

 walking into camp of the first bear we had seen since leaving the 

 neighborhood of Alaska. 



It was about noon, and Ole and I were asleep while Storkerson 

 was standing watch. He was beginning to cook, preparatory to call- 

 ing me for my watch, when the dogs started to bark at a diffident 

 young bear that was hovering about and sniffing the camp from one 

 or two hundred yards to leeward. By the time I had my eyes opened 

 and my rifle in hand he had begun a circumspect approach. We 

 waited till he was within twenty-five yards and then I shot him 

 about three inches from the heart. His stomach contained nothing, 

 so he could not have been faring very well the last day or so, but 

 before that his hunt must have been successful for he was as fat as 

 is desirable for food. 



Questions frequently are put to me as to whether caribou meat 

 or musk-ox meat or bear meat or seal meat is good eating, and 

 then I struggle against impatience, for underlying the query is a 

 fundamental misunderstanding of human tastes and prejudice in 

 food. A rule with no more exceptions than ordinary rules is that 

 people like the sort of food to which they are accustomed. An 

 American will tell you that he can eat white bread every day but 

 that he gets tired of rice if he eats it more than once or twice a 

 month, while a Chinaman may think that rice is an excellent food 

 for every day but that wheat bread soon palls. An Englishman 

 will tell you that beef is the best meat in the world, while in Ice- 

 land or in Thibet you will learn that beef is all right now and then, 

 but mutton is the only meat of which you never tire. If a man 

 is brought up on the west coast of Norway or on Prince Edward 

 Island, he thinks that herring and potatoes make the best of all 

 staple diets, while an Iowa farmer likes potatoes well enough but 

 would balk at the herring. 



Polar bear is a rare item in the diet of most Eskimo groups that 

 I have known, and accordingly nearly all of them prefer some other 

 form of meat. But the Eskimos of Prince Albert Sound who on 

 their winter hunts in Banks Island live for several months each 

 year nearly exclusively on polar-bear meat are very fond of it. 



