THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 575 



been there for at least a week and Lopez estimated that he had 

 eaten the dried meat of seventeen out of twenty-seven seals. Evi- 

 dently in common with the rest of us he preferred the food he was 

 used to, for he had not touched the ovibos meat. They killed the 

 bear but his carcass was small pay for our loss. We wanted the 

 dried meat for sledge provisions during the dark and half-dark 

 part of the winter and early spring, whereas fresh meat as good 

 as his was easy enough to get. However, there still remained about 

 twenty-four hundred pounds of dried meat which was safely home 

 in two days. 



We now felt certain that the dried meat depot at Cape Ross 

 would be gone, for bears are more likely to touch at a headland 

 than to come into a bay as this one had done. But the Cape Ross 

 depot was high on a cliff while the nearer one had been on the 

 beach, and either this or luck preserved it for us, for it was found 

 all safe, about twelve hundred pounds. 



We now had another illustration of the food prejudices of men 

 and dogs and, in this case, of wolves, which are after all but a 

 sort of dog. Although the dried meat had been hauled home from 

 the near depot, the meat of the bear had been left temporarily as 

 of less consequence than the dried meat, and several days passed 

 befor the men could go to fetch it. They found that a number of 

 wolves — perhaps six, for we saw a band of that size about that 

 time — had been around the depot during the nights and had dug 

 up and gnawed to pieces meatless bones of ovibos and had eaten 

 scraps of dry hide. But they had not touched the bear, either 

 the meat or the fat. That these wolves could not under ordinary 

 circumstances kill ovibos was shown by the fact that a medium- 

 sized herd was grazing in the vicinity and tracks showed that the 

 wolves had both seen and smelt the herd without making any at- 

 tempt upon it. Still, through the occasional killing of a stray calf 

 or a sickly old animal they were familiar with ovibos meat and 

 devoured what had the familiar taste and smell. Moreover, all 

 rotten meat smells much alike, and doubtless these bones had a 

 putrid smell, one familiar to the wolves and relished. It is prob- 

 able they cannot kill a bear and that they never try. Bear meat 

 therefore was new in their experience and they turned up their 

 noses at it. 



The dried meat was all home and the depots of fresh caribou 

 meat in the interior seemed reasonably safe, for they were covered 

 with rocks against wolves, and bears are less likely to be found 

 inland than on the coast. We had plenty of evidence of the num- 



