THE YERMAK ICE BREAKP^R. 455 



tho disting-uished oceanographor, and I am of opinion that cold water 

 must settle down the slope of the bottom close to Spitzl^ergen. 



There is no voyager in the polar regions who has not his own story 

 of bear shooting. I could not sacrifice time in that sport, })ut there is 

 such an abundance of polar bears that one can not avoid having a shot 

 at them. Fresh traces of the white bear are seen on almost every 

 other ice floe. Generally the track goes from one end of the floe to 

 the other, and it looks as if the bear on his way goes straight, whether 

 on water or a floe of ice. The bear usually makes a hole in the snow, 

 and then lies dow^n in it, so that you can not see him from a short dis- 

 tance. When a ship passes he jumps out at once from his hole, and 

 were it not for this one would pass him by unnoticed. 



The moment we entered the ice in June we saw two bears, l)ut we 

 were very bus}' at that time with the study of the ice, so that we let 

 them go their own way. When we came next into the ice in August 

 we saw some bears almost every day. One bear was upon the floe 

 when we approached. Our sportsman wounded him, but the l)ear 

 escaped to the other end of the floe, and swam over the lane. By that 

 time the Yermak approached the place where the bear was, and it was 

 shot dead by a bullet from the forecastle of the ship. We stayed a 

 quarter of an hour to get him on board. On another occasion three 

 l)ears approached the ship at 4 o'clock in the morning. Afterwards 

 they proved to be a she bear with her cub, and a he bear. The watch- 

 man roused the sportsman, who at once pursued the bears. The cub 

 was wounded first, in the leg, and it was most pathetic to see the 

 mother bear help her baby to get over the ridges. Another bullet 

 killed the cub. The mother bear, imagining that it was the he l)ear 

 that had killed the baby, rushed violently upon the he bear, and ripped 

 up his skin for more than a foot in length. This gave to our sports- 

 man the chance to approach and finish with both bears. 



The most interesting part of the experiment is the behavior of the 

 ship herself in the ice; the question whether or not the steel ice breakei- 

 can In-eak polar ice and stand its pressure. Experiments in the Baltic 

 have shown that a great deal of power is required to propel the ship 

 through the ice. Ice ridges in deep water, in the Baltic, never attam 

 any considerable height, but the ice is difiicult to pass through; and it 

 happens that the ice field, which is no higher than 1 or 2 feet, re(iuires 

 more power than the Yemiak can supply. In these cases we were 

 obliged to move the ship astern, and charge at full speed, g-tiining 

 sometimes less than the half-length of the ship at a charge. Ihe tact 

 is that the Baltic ice, being composed of pieces no more than ^I to 6 

 feet thick, gives a very great skin resistance to the ship. I his was so 

 to such an extent that other ships following the \ennak in the cana 

 opened by her, on some occasions, could scarcely proceed with tall 

 speed. 



