18 



Ryder's expedition wintered, from the sixth of November 1891, 

 till the 20*^ of February 1892 (see about this Bay: Medd. om 

 Grønland XIX) ; in the beginning of March it appeared more 

 and more frequently, and in the end of March a day scarcely 

 ever passed without their seeing a bear. It is not difficult to 

 find the cause of this wandering. When autumn comes, and 

 the inlet gets frozen, the seal does not any more go up on the 

 ice; it is now impossible for the bears to catch any seal, the 

 time of hunger makes its appearance, and therefore they seek 

 outward to the outer coast or out on the field-ice itself, where 

 now and then they will get an opportunity of catching a seal, 

 or perhaps a walrus, also dead seals, left by the sealers on 

 the ice. In the month of March, the ringed seal produces her 

 young, in chambers in the snow, on the ice on the inlets; again 

 the seals come up on the ice , and now the bear appears to 

 revel in an abundance of food, and goes on living there during 

 the summer. When perhaps the ice in summer disappears 

 here, and the bear therefore seldom catches a seal, Vaccinium, 

 Oxyria etc. afford abundant food. On the coast Amdrup tra- 

 velled over, he saw, as above mentioned, many bears ; for in the 

 places where glaciers were shooting out into the sea, exceedingly 

 many seals were found. But on the arrival of winter, when the 

 field-ice sets in hard towards land, the seals do not climb 

 the ice, and a great many bears seek out on the field-ice. 



At Angmagsalik the bears are generally found, when the 

 field-ice is coming from the North; for they arrive drifting 

 with it; in winters where there is not much field-ice, there 

 are not many bears either; but in summer scarcely a single 

 bear is found in the whole of the inhabited district ; to such 

 a degree they are persecuted by the inhabitants ; but the field- 

 ice of the next year again brings a new cargo of bears down 

 there, and thus a considerable hunting of bears may yearly be 

 carried on. The best bear hunting takes place in February. 

 In the beginning the bears are very fat; but towards spring 



