RECREATION 



Volume XIL MAY, 1900. Number 5. 



G. 0. SHIELDS (COQUINA), Editor and Manager. 



A RACE WITH A POLAR BEAR. 



CAPT. S. S. BODFISH. 



It was on my i8th consecutive walruses lay everywhere on the ice, 



whaling cruise in Bering sea. It was about the air holes, arid all we had to 



in the winter of '98, and we were do was to sneak up and slip a bullet 



frozen in at Cape Bathurst, British into one as he lay asleep. 



America. We had had a successful Yet we killed but few of them ; just 



summer, and the ship was well load- enough to supply our dogs with meat 



ed with whalebone. There was little and the ship with oil for fuel and 



in the way of amusement, or even di- lights. 



version, for me or my men ; and the At rare intervals a trading party ul 



long Arctic winter was dreary and Indians came to us, but they had little 



monotonous in the extreme. to sell, and consequently, little means 



We had not had a mail for 6 with which to buy; so our traffic with 



months, and knew nothing of what them was exceedingly small. Occa- 



was going on in the great outside sionally, 2 or 3 of my hunters would 



world. We had some books and old make a trip inland, for caribou or 



magazines on board, but had read musk oxen, and they usually returned 



and reread them all. \\ had no empty handed. Both species of game 



theatres, no political meetings, no are reasonably plentiful on the Arctic 



camp fire clubs, no prize fights, no coast, to the East and West of the 



wide open tenderloin to amuse us. McKenzie, but the country is so vast 



Tiue, we occasionally got up a in extent it is only by making long, 



game of penny ante ; but even if we tedious and persistent hunting trips 



won the other fellows' money, there that men can find the bands of game 



was no way to spend it. So the only animals which inhabit that desolate 



real dissipation open to us was to sit region. 



around in the cabin, smoke plug to- A man who hunts game to sell has 

 bacco and plan what we should do no enthusiasm in his work. With him 

 when we got back to Frisco, 8 it is the same as quarrying stone or 

 months hence. digging potatoes. The idea of sport 

 There were no animals about us, does not enter his head once a week. 

 except seals, walruses and polar bears, And so it is that a whaling crew, 

 and the 2 former were so familiar to even when frozen in for 8 long 

 us that we took little notice of them. months, does little hunting or shoot- 

 Some of your readers, if they could ing, even though game may be abun- 

 have been with us, would have had dant all about them, 

 great sport shooting these animals. I I did bring out, on one trip, 74 

 do not say hunting, for there was lit- musk ox skins, but most of them were 

 tie hunting about it. The seals and bought from the Eskimos. I have 



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