A POLAR HUNT.* 



I AY could not be said to have dawned when we awoke, 

 for the sun had not been seen in three months, and 

 we were in the midst of the polar winter. Yet the 

 bitter cold of the Arctic morning, all the more 

 keenly noticeable through the fires burning low, roused us 

 from our slumbers. 



It was too cold at night to undress; therefore, after a 

 hasty breakfast had been demolished, all that had to be 

 done in- the way of a toilet was to don our fur costumes, 

 of Eskimo manufacture, and, guns in hand, we left the 

 ship. White Beaxs had been seen in the vicinity of the 

 ship, and now we were after their meat as well as their 

 hides. 



A superstitious halo seems to enshroud the Bruin of the 

 Arctics. He is endowed, in the minds of some people, with 

 supernatural attributes wonderful to contemplate. Indeed, 

 he appears to savor more of the supernatural than the 

 natural. While he is undoubtedly a terrible fellow to 

 encounter single-handed,- yet, if a choice were given me, I 

 should prefer an encounter with him rather than with a 

 Grizzly of the Rocky Mountains. But to our adventures. 



Will (my chum) and I had been followed by half a dozen 

 of the Eskimo sledge-dogs, and these careered about on 

 every side, hundreds of yards away, clearly showing that if 

 a Bear were snoozing anywhere in the township (Jove! I'm 

 forgetting where we were), he would run the risk of disturb- 

 ance. Will carried a heavy English Express rifle 1 — the cali- 

 ber of which I have forgotten — carrying an explosive ball, 

 while my -shooting-tube was a 45-90 Winchester repeater, 

 that threw an expansive bullet. Anything that this bullet 



* A friend who recently spent some months at Hudson's Bay sends me this sketch, and 

 modestly requests that his name be withheld.— Editor. 

 16 (241) 



