170 Our North Land. 



" I say, doctor, what in thunder are you doing with my bear 

 skin ? " 



" Your bear skin ? Indeed ! " said Dr. Bell, with a roguish 

 twinkle in his right eye, continuing his operations. " I guess not, 

 sir ! 



" You guess not ! What do you mean, sir ? I'll give you to 

 know that this is my skin. It is skin No. 2. I own a full share in 

 it, and have purchased one of the other shares, and have bargained 

 for the third, and don't want any one to meddle with it." 



" 0, you don't, aye ? And so j 7 ou have bargained for the third 

 share, have you ? And suppose I have already purchased it, what 

 then ? One share ought to give me the right to skin the paws, to 

 say the least," added the geological man, tauntingly. 



"What do you say ? You have purchased the third, have you ? 

 We will see about that." And the two-thirds proprietor of skin No. 2 

 turned away frantically. 



Here was evidently a dead-lock. At first sight the two-share 

 proprietor would seem to have an advantage, but at first sight only. 

 When two-thirds is pitted against one-third, and the latter is backed 

 by science, patriotism, and a national museum, the odds, if any, may 

 turn out in favour of the museum. 



I suppose I have already detained the reader too long with this 

 white bear story ; but apologies are useless. 



The Digges Islands, to which I have incidentally referred more 

 than once, are a group of some fifteen or twenty, lying off the north- 

 west of Cape Wolstenholme at the south side of the entrance from 

 Hudson Strait to Hudson's Bay. One, the largest, is some five 

 miles wide and eighteen long. The others are all very much smaller, 

 some not more than two miles in circumference. 



We had anchored at the largest island, and the one situated 

 farthest from the coast, nearly twenty miles, and perhaps more, 

 north-west from the Cape. We travelled pretty thoroughly over it, 

 and judged it to be five miles wide by about eighteen miles 

 long, composed of entirely barren rocks, with an elevation of from 

 thirty to four hundred feet above the level of the water. The hills 

 were draped about by winding ravines or bog-marshes, through 



