HUNTERS AND HUNTING 

 IN THE ARCTIC 



TRAPPERS 



DURING the winter months only is the hair of 

 the white bear thick and in good condition, 

 whilst in summer the skin of the white or blue 

 fox becomes grey, mangy in appearance, and 

 quite worthless from the marketable point of 

 view. For these reasons the fur hunter is 

 compelled to pass the winter in the northern 

 regions. 



The custom that arose among the English 

 and Dutch whalers of the seventeenth century, 

 of leaving men to guard the boilers and other 

 apparatus established at Spitzbergen, combined 

 with the fact that numerous shipwrecked sailors 

 survived winters on these coasts, proved con- 

 clusively that it was physically possible for Euro- 

 peans to endure the rigours of a Polar winter. 

 So, when the last of the whales quitted the bays 



