THE EUROPEAN BEARS AND THE WILD BOAR 
defence of its cubs. When pressed by hunger, they are very bold and will 
approach and even break into huts where food is stored. An Icelander on 
the north coast of Iceland told me that one severe -winter he was aroused 
by some one, as he thought, attempting to break in the door of his cottage, 
and on going to discover the cause found a large Polar bear biting the 
wooden door to pieces. With a shot gun he managed to destroy the in- 
vader. 
Any sportsman who wishes to add this animal to his collection cannot 
do better than employ Herr Magnus Giaver, of Christiania, who, in his 
vessel, the “ Laura,” has made over twenty trips after Polar bear, seals, 
reindeer and musk ox. He knows the ice conditions of the Polar seas better 
than any living man, and though the trip is an expensive one, success is a 
certainty and the voyage can be done in comfort and even luxury. Those 
who cannot afford a considerable expense and are content with one or 
two specimens of Polar bears can go in one of the small vessels that annually 
leave Trondhjem in June, July and August for a month’s trip in the north. 
These small vessels usually kill from twenty to thirty Polar bears in one 
month, and the expenses to each rifle are about £140. It must be remem- 
bered, however, that the party usually includes six rifles, and each has to 
take his chance in turn. Several of my friends have made trips in these 
vessels and been successful, but one and all speak of Polar bear shooting 
in the sea and on the ice-floes as very indifferent sport, in which the game 
has no chance, either to charge or to escape. Modern rifles are now so good 
that a single shot, properly placed, at once kills the animal, whilst there is 
no hunting in the correct sense of the wood, but merely pursuit in a boat 
and then slaughter. 
Sir Savile Crossley tells me that he killed most of his Polar bears by 
imitating the antics of a seal rolling on the ice. The bear, on seeing what 
he thought to be a good dinner, gradually approached within shot. Nowhere 
at the present day are polar bears so plentiful as they are in the bays of 
East Greenland almost opposite Iceland, but it is very difficult as well 
as dangerous for any vessel to get to this place. In 1899 I saw a small 
sailing boat at Aalesund, in Norway, which had just returned from a 
summer trip there. It had been manned by three Norwegian boys, none of 
them older than twenty -two years of age. These plucky fellows had gone 
through the ice -break between N.W. Iceland and Jan Mayen, and then struck 
south between the ice-pack and the mainland of E. Greenland. They had 
only entered two bays on the coast and found the climate as warm and 
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