THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 303 



cessive summer gale breaks the ice more, and there are no frosts 

 to cement the fragments together before autumn. There is enough 

 water between the floes so seals can travel freely in all directions, 

 and they do, coming up in the free water patches to breathe. 

 Then comes the autumn with its light frosts and mushy young ice 

 forming everywhere. The seals are reluctant to stop their wan- 

 derings and are free to continue them awhile, for a sharp upward 

 bunt of their heads will break ice up to four inches thick and give 

 them a chance to breathe. When a seal travels along a lead cov- 

 ered with young ice he leaves behind a trail of circular fracture 

 spots from a dozen to several dozen yards apart. Months later, 

 and up to next summer, these fracture spots are our game signs, 

 our index to the former presence of seals. Most of them are hid- 

 den by the snow in winter, but if you watch as you travel, all day 

 and every day, you will eventually be rewarded by seeing an ice 

 patch swept bare by some wind eddy where there happens to be 

 the characteristic round fracture spot. 



But when the ice thickens beyond four inches and hardens, the 

 seals must stop traveling and take up residence. Here, by mdus- 

 trious gnawing, they keep breathing holes open all winter. At 

 the surface these holes have openings only an inch or two in 

 diameter; but underneath they are enlarged continually until as 

 the ice thickens to two or four or even the maximum of seven 

 feet, they become cigar-shaped chambers of diameter large enough 

 for the seal's body. Each seal may have a half-dozen of these 

 cigar-shaped chambers leading to breathing holes that are cov- 

 ered with a few inches or a few feet of snow and thus hidden from 

 the observation of man and from the eye of an animal. A bear can 

 discover them by the sense of smell. This may serve his purpose 

 if the ice is only a few inches thick, as he can with his mighty 

 strength fracture it for several square yards around. The seal will 

 imagine this ice to have been broken by the pressure of wind 

 and current and will rise with purpose to breathe and with result 

 of becoming a meal for the waiting bear. Near land the ice is 

 much broken by pressure at all times of year and young ice thin 

 enough to be broken by a bear is continually forming over patches 

 where seals sported in open water a few days earlier. On this 

 young ice as well as in the open water itself the bears know how 

 to get the seals. But far from land the pressures are milder and 

 the ice less often broken by it, so that there are large areas where 

 the skill and strength of the bears do not suffice to get them any 

 seals. Accordingly, bears are rare or absent, which is one of the 



