THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 349 



pains to look for them. On one occasion we took several photo- 

 graphs of two young bulls and a cow. They were about half a mile 

 from camp and Thomsen and Ole went up within fifty yards of 

 them to have a good look. The animals stopped feeding and kept 

 their eyes continually on the two men as long as they were near 

 but resumed their feeding when they left. Upon the report of the 

 tameness of these three, Storkerson took a camera, went within 

 about fifty yards and took about three pictures, later spoilt by water 

 getting into the camera. Storkerson had used a 'Vest pocket" 

 camera, and on his report of how near he had been I took a larger 

 camera to try to get some better pictures. But our attentions 

 were beginning to seem suspicious, for when I got within three 

 hundred yards the animals became restless and when I was more 

 than two hundred yards away they ran off. They ran for about a 

 quarter of a mile and stopped on top of a knoll, and when I con- 

 tinued to follow they ran a second time, and the third time they 

 kept running till they were out of sight. 



Thus we got an initial lesson in the psychology of ovibos. Their 

 minds seem to work remarkably slowly and it takes a long time 

 to make them run. They make a defensive formation when any 

 startling object appears to them. Farther their thinking does not 

 seem to go until after five or ten minutes. Anybody who goes 

 under cover to within two hundred yards and then runs up at top 

 speed can get within any distance of a herd unless that particular 

 herd is nervous from having been previously followed around and 

 frightened. But if after running up you remain near them for five 

 or ten minutes, there is about an even chance of one of two things 

 happening: either they will scatter and begin to feed or they will 

 stampede. At this time the ovibos were shedding their wool so 

 profusely that upon side view their legs could not easily be seen 

 and in some cases could not be seen at all for the wool that hung 

 down to the ground and dragged along. 



Marie Bay, which the chart shows as less than five miles deep, 

 appeared in the crossing to be fifteen or twenty miles deep. It 

 seemed to have a fjord-like character and for five or six miles in- 

 land a uniform width of three or four miles, and beyond that to 

 continue for at least another ten miles. This discrepancy seemed 

 curious to us at the time but it is not remarkable when we compare 

 it with McClintock's record of his survey of this coast. Both his 

 diary and his route show that he traveled about tangent to 

 Cape De Bray and Sandy Point, a course that took him far out- 

 side the mouth of the fjord which itself extends out from a shallow 



