A BEAR. 
89 
change ; but by fixing the eye carefully and continu- 
ously upon a line in advance of us, where an old lead 
had closed two days before, you could perceive a very 
slight separation. The closed line had become a crack 
at least three or four inches wide. On our sending 
out a hawser to a solid floe ahead, and heaving in with 
the patent windlass, a distinct movement was seen in 
the floe. The aperture, at first a mere crack, widen- 
ed to a couple of feet, dividing, as it did so, two fields 
of at least twenty acres area. The traction continu- 
ing, our wedge-shaped bows insinuated themselves 
into a self-made channel, and, acquiring new momen- 
tum, we forced a barrier ahead, dragging the Rescue 
after us. Such instances illustrate strikingly the ef- 
fects of a constant force upon large masses in equili- 
brium. To the eye it would seem impossible to influ- 
ence by such means fields of ice weighing hundreds 
of thousands of tons. Yet, in the nicely poised con- 
dition of the floes, they invariably yield to continued 
traction. 
" While working with the rest of the crew upon the 
ice, I was startled by a cry of ' bear.' Sure enough 
it was that menagerie wonder. Not, however, the 
sleepy thing which, with begrimed hair, and subdued, 
dirty face, appeals to your sympathies as he walks the 
endless rounds of a wet cage. Our first polar bear 
moved past us on the floes, a short half mile ofi", with 
the leisurely march of fearless freedom. He was a 
bear of the first magnitude, about nine feet long, as 
we afterward found by measuring his tracks. His 
length appeared to us still greater than this, for he 
carried his head and neck on a line with the long axis 
of his body. His color, as defined upon the white 
snow, was a delicate yellow — not tawny, but a true 
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