414 THE POLAR BEAR. 
ed on the ice : a hollow on our starboard bow, produced by 
the pressure of the two vessels, was the cause of this. All 
Saturday the gale continued ; but though the ice seemed to 
be brought up, out of the sixteen vessels lying Avithin short 
spaces of each other, all were more or less damaged, except 
the Cumbrian, of Hull, and a Dutch vessel. On Wednesday, 
the 30th of June, a melancholy accident occurred at one of 
the wrecks, while endeavoring to get out a cable. A man 
belonging to the Triad, of Kirkaldy, had one of his feet tore 
off above the ancle. The leg was afterward amputated below 
the knee. This forenoon the Resolution was set on fire, and 
burned to the water's edge." 
The master of one of the lost vessels, in a letter dated Ex- 
eter Bay, 15th Sept. writes as follows. 
" On the 2d July our vessel, along with several others, 
was caught by the ice, which came with such overwhelm- 
ing force against her, that it fairly lifted her out of the 
water on the surface of the ice, as if to give us the last 
look of her before she parted. She made a most majestic 
appearance, standing as upright as if she had been docked. 
It was not before the water had reached her cabin sole that I 
abandoned her, to take my seat on my chest that was standing 
on the ice, there to witness the last struggles of our gallant 
bark. I am unable to depict the magnificent scene that pre- 
sented itself to my view, but it was one which would have 
suited either poet or painter. The first symptoms of de- 
struction appeared among the half-deck planks ; then the 
standing rigging and stays became slackened, and nothing 
was heard but the crashing of the hull as she went to pieces. 
Her masts meantime slowly bent toward each other, as if to 
take their final adieu ; and when they came in collision, they 
seemed to say, " and must we part." They then fell with a 
tremendous crash ; and the hull was buried for ever beneath a 
floe of ice six feet in thickness. It was an appalling — a heart- 
rending spectacle." 
THE POLAR BEAR. 
In the caves of the rocks, or in the hollows of the ice, dwells 
the most formidable of arctic quadrupeds, the Greenland or 
polar bear. This fierce tyrant of the cliffs and snows of the 
