156 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



After this satiating meal he probably feels as if he will never care 

 to eat again and goes away to sleep under a neighboring hummock 

 leaving for the foxes what is left. It is not likely that he will come 

 back, but if he did, the foxes would hop and the gulls flutter away. 

 From long experience he gets the impression that these creatures 

 are not the least bit dangerous, but too elusive to be caught. 



Without doubt the bear is able to tell the difference between a 

 living seal and the meat of a dead one when he sniffs them in the 

 air. There is always seal meat in our baggage and the smell is 

 always about our camp. When a bear passes to leeward he must 

 perceive the many camp odors, but the only one which interests him 

 is that of the seal meat. Knowing no fear, he comes straight into 

 camp, walking leisurely because he does not expect the dead seals 

 which he smells to escape him; neither has he in mind any hostility 

 or disposition to attack, for, through long experience with foxes 

 and gulls, he expects any living thing he meets to make way for 

 him. But if on coming vvdthin a hundred or two hundred yards 

 of camp he happens to see a sleeping dog, and especially if the dog 

 were to move slightly, as is common enough, the bear apparently 

 thinks, "Well, that is a live seal, after all!" He then instantly 

 makes himself unbelievably fiat on the ice, and with neck and snout 

 touching the snow advances almost toboggan-fashion toward the 

 dogs, stopping dead if one of them moves, and advancing again 

 when they become quiet. If there is any unevenness in the ice, as 

 there nearly always is in the vicinity of our camps — we choose 

 such camping places — he will take cover behind a hummock and 

 advance in its shelter. 



Our dogs are always tied, for in the dead of night a good dog 

 may be killed or incapacitated in their fights with one another in 

 less time than it takes a sleepy man to wake up and interfere. But 

 we know the danger from approaching polar bears and endeavor to 

 scatter the dogs in such a way that while a bear is approaching one 

 dog in an exposed situation, another will get the animal's wind. 

 Usually, too, we tie the dogs to windward of the camp, so that the 

 bear shall have to pass us before he comes to them. When one dog 

 sees or smells the bear he commences barking, and in a second 

 every other dog is barking. At once the bear loses interest. He 

 apparently thinks, "After all, this is not a seal, but a fox or a gull." 

 His mind reverts to the seal meat he has been smelling, he gets 

 up from his fiat position and resumes his leisurely walk toward the 

 camp. By that time, even though we may have been asleep, one of 



