118 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



side the carcasses to wait for his approach, but it 

 had now got so bitterly cold that I was afraid I 

 would be half frozen before he came ; so, after a 

 minute's consultation with Christian, we decided on 

 a middle course, which he said he thought would do 

 equally as well as if I lay down on the ice. We 

 rowed as fast as we could toward the carcasses, and 

 pushed the boat into a little creek, which fortunate- 

 ly existed in the edge of the ice exactly eighty yards 

 on our side of the carcasses. The bear was still 

 snuffing about on the land, and had not perceived 

 us yet, and, the boat being quite white like the ice, 

 it was not likely he would do so now if we kept 

 still. I made all the men crouch down in the bot- 

 tom of the boat, while I alone watched the motions 

 of Bruin by peeping over the gunwale through a 

 large double-barreled opera-glass, which I generally 

 carry in preference to a telescope for sporting pur- 

 poses, on account of its greater quickness. 



Strange sights has that large, old, battered opera- 

 glass seen in its day, for, besides its legitimate oc- 

 cupation of gazing at the beauties in the opera- 

 houses of London, Paris, Florence, Naples, Havana, 

 and New York, it has seen great races at Epsom ; 

 great reviews in the Champ de Mars ; great bull- 

 fights in the amphitheatre at Seville. It has stalk- 

 ed red-deer on the hills of the Highlands, scaly 

 crocodiles on the sand-banks of the Nile, and roud 

 the hieroglyphics on the tops of the awful temples 

 and monuments of Thebes and Karnak. It has 



