107 Arctic adventures the search continued 



talking to them occurred to us. Actually, I think this was Bob 

 Smith's idea. We had been working over the delta country rather 

 industriously and were branching out to cover the adjacent region 

 eastward over the upland tundra and northeastward to the islands 

 off the coast and the lonely mud flats of the coastal tundra toward 

 Cape Dalhousie. We had found snow geese and black brant nest- 

 ing on islands at the outer extremity of the delta, and even 

 ptarmigan on some of the larger islands that were extensive enough 

 to boast the rolling upland habitat. On the twenty-second of June 

 it was warmer, with a southerly wind and a pleasantly hazy sky. 

 Off the coast near Tuktuk and in the western end of the Eskimo 

 Lakes the ice showed definite signs of breaking. As we skimmed 

 low over the mossy, uneven surface of the tundra, we spotted a 

 whistling swan sitting on her eggs on the very top of a little hill. 

 And down the slope to one side, beyond the vision of the swan, 

 a great lumbering grizzly was moving, his tremendous head lolling 

 from side to side. He was climbing directly toward the swan. At 

 the same moment the grizzly heard our engines, and we saw him 

 look up with an expression of surprise and annoyance. Bob banked 

 the plane as rapidly as safety permitted and came back directly 

 toward the bear. The beast had turned and was now running 

 downgrade at a tremendous rate. Bob flew within 1 50 feet of him, 

 banked the plane so as to give him a direct look at the huge 

 animal, and when we had him exactly on our beam, Bob turned 

 his head toward him and yelled, "Run, you big fat slob! Run, you 

 blankety-blank so-and-so!" The bear ran, and kept on running 

 after we had pulled up and were far above and beyond him. Bob, 

 grinning broadly and with his good spirits completely restored, 

 turned to me and said, "I always wanted to cuss out a grizzly 

 bear. Notice how surprised he looked? No one ever talked to him 

 like that before!" 



By the twenty-fifth, the ice had broken up enough to allow us 

 to make tentative water landings on some of the deeper tundra 

 lakes. We landed at about 69 north and close to 1 32 west, beyond 

 the tree limit between the western extremity of the Eskimo Lakes 

 and Urquhart Lake and some 90 airline miles northeast of Aklavik. 

 We waded ashore through the icy water and, for the first time, 



