360 THE ZOOLOGY OF THE LABRADOR COAST. 



the Island of Birds, now Funk or Fogo Island, on the 

 northeastern coast of Newfoundland ; also of the Bird 

 rocks of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 



While harboring at what is now Funk Island, Cartier, 

 after describing the great auks, tells us that he saw a 

 white bear. In his own language, done into quaint 

 English by Hakluyt : "And albeit the sayd Island be 

 14 leagues from the maineland, notwithstanding beares 

 come swimming thither to eat of the sayd birds : and 

 our men found one there as great as any cow, and as 

 white as any swan, who in their presence leapt into the 

 sea, and upon Whitsun-monday (following our voyage 

 towards the land) we met her by the way, swimming 

 toward land as swiftly as we could saile. So soone as 

 we saw her, we pursued her with our boats, and by maine 

 strength tooke her, whose flesh was as goode to be eaten 

 as the flesh of a calfe two yeres olde." 



From this graphic and circumstantial account we feel 

 sure that this was the great white or polar bear {Ursus 

 maritimus) ; that it reached its full size, was not uncom- 

 mon on the mainland (John Cabot says the land was 

 " full" of them), and that it bred there, as those, men- 

 tioned by Parmenius in 1583 were probably young ones. 



The white bear is still occasionally seen on this coast, 

 as Rev. Mr. Harvey states :* "The seal hunters occasion- 

 ally encounter the white or polar bear on the ice off the 

 coast, and sometimes it has been known to land." 



Now, if in these early times of Cabot and Cartier the 

 eastern coast of Newfoundland was the habitat and 

 breeding place of the polar bear, it is not unlikely that 



* Halton and Harvey's Newfoundland, Boston, 1883, p. 193. 



