284 
POLAR BEAR. 
have met with no account of any Polar Bear, killed of late years, which 
exceeded nine feet in length, or four feet and a-half in height. It 
is possible that larger individuals may he occasionally found : but the 
greatness of the dimensions attributed to them by the older voyagers has, 
I doubt not, originated in the skin having been measured after being much 
stretched in the process of flaying.” 
The great power of the Polar Bear is portrayed in the account of a dis- 
astrous accident which befel the crew ofBARENTz’s vessel on his second 
voyage to Waigat’s Straits. “On the 6th of September, 1594, some sailors 
landed to search for a certain sort of stone, a species of diamond. During 
this search, two of the seamen lay down to sleep by one another, and a 
White Bear, very lean, approaching softly, seized one of them by the nape 
of the neck. The poor man, not knowing what it was, cried out “who 
has seized me thus behind ?” on which his companion, raising his head, 
said, “ Holloa, mate, it is a Bear,” and immediately ran away. The Bear 
having dreadfully mangled the unfortunate man’s head, sucked the blood. 
The I’est of the persons who were on shore, to the number of twenty, 
immediateljf ran with their match-locks and pikes, and found the Bear 
devouring the body ; on seeing them, he ran upon- them, and carrying 
another man away, tore him to pieces. This second misadventure so ter- 
rified them that they all fled. They advanced again, however, with a 
reinforcement, and the two pilots having fired three times without hitting 
the animal, the purser approached a little nearer, and shot the Bear in the 
head, close by the eye. This did not cause him to quit his prev, for, 
holding the body, which he was devouring, always by the neck, he car- 
ried it away as yet quite entire. Nevertheless, they then perceived that 
he began himself to totter, and the purser and a Scotchman going towards 
him, they gave him several sabre wounds, and cut him to pieces, without 
his abandoning his prey. 
In Barentz’s third voyage, a story is told of two Bears coming to the 
carcass of a third one that had been shot, when one of them, taking it 
by the throat, carried it to a considerable distance, over the most rugged 
ice, where they both began to eat it. They were scared from their re- 
past by the report of a musket, and a party of seamen going to the place, 
found that, in the little time they were about it, they had already de- 
voured half the carcase, which was of such a size that four men had 
great difficulty in lifting the remainder. In a manuscript account of 
Hudson’s Bay, written about the year 1786, by Mr. Andrew Graham, 
one of Pennant’s ablest correspondents, and preserved at the Hudson’s 
Bay house, an anecdote of a different description occurs. “One of the 
Company’s servants who was tenting abroad to procure rabbits, {Lepus 
