STONEY RIVER. 



161 



horizon to the shores of the bay. The relief 

 to us was like a cessation from an agony of 

 pain ; and as the hunter had just killed another 

 deer, and the wild fowl flew around us in 

 abundance, we pitched the tent, and halted for 

 several hours, and refreshed ourselves with 

 sleep, after the irritation and almost sleepless 

 nights that we had endured. We were on the 

 march again at five o'clock ; and after we had 

 forded Stoney River, we came upon the track 

 of a polar bear. The Indian hunter was very 

 keen in his desire to fall in with it, and I 

 lamented that I had not an opportunity of 

 seeing him engage the ferocious animal, which 

 seemed to have taken a survey of the party, 

 and to have gone into the wood a short dis- 

 tance from us. The bears are now coming off 

 the ice in the Bay, on which they have been 

 for several months past, to live upon seals, 

 which they catch as they lie sleeping by the 

 sides of the holes in the drift ice, when it 

 dissolves or is driven far from shore. They 

 seek their food among the sea-weed and every 

 trash that is washed up along the coast, or go 

 upon the rocks or to the woods, for berries, 

 during the summer months. Savage, however, 

 as this animal is, it is not so much dreaded by 

 the Indians as the grizzly bear, which is more 



M 



