406 
COLD-WEATIIER YARNS. 
and paid for his dinner by telling us many amusing 
anecdotes of whaling and arctic life. Among other 
things he told us of a friend of his, the captain of a Jfew 
Bedford whaler, who, having remained about this island 
too late in the season, hoping to fill his ship with oil, had 
got her frozen in, and been thus kept there until the 
spring thaw came on; During the severe winter which 
ensued, the whole ocean became one solid mass of ice, 
and the island and mainland were covered to a great 
depth by incessant falls of snow. While thus frozen in, 
his ship was often visited by bear, until they began to 
recognise it as an object from which they w'ere always 
fired upon, after which they gave it a wide berth. He 
had often, he said, seen these animals miles out to sea- 
ward on the ice, as long as it was firm and solid ; but as 
soon as it began to thaw they seemed to know that it 
was no longer a safe promenade, and confined themselves 
to the scarcely-reeognisable beach. 
He also confirmed previous accounts, of which we 
had both heard and read, as to the inordinate amount 
of food that is required to maintain animal heat during 
severe winters. Many bear had been killed from the 
ships, he said, whose meat proved a most seasonable 
auxiliary to their regular rations, which would have been 
exhausted long before the return of temperate weather, 
had it not been for that. He had heard of one man 
eating fifteen pounds of bear-meat in a single day; and, 
although Parr}', Sir John Franklin, and other arctic 
explorers, mention a still greater quantity as a matter 
of every-day consumption, still, it was curious and inte- 
resting to have it confirmed in this way. 
