412 
THE BEAR. 
frolic of it,—rolling our bread-barrels over 
the ice-foot and into the broken ice beyond; 
and, unable to masticate our hard, heavy 
India-rubber cloth, they had tied it up into 
unimaginable hard knots. Mr. McGary de¬ 
scribes the whole area round the cache as 
marked by the well-worn paths of these ani¬ 
mals ; and an adjacent slope of ice-covered 
rocks, with an angle of forty-five degrees, was 
so worn and covered with hair as to suggest 
the idea that they had been sliding down on 
their haunches,—a performance, by-the-way, 
at which I afterwards caught them myself.’ ” 
Sidney and Richard were very much 
amused at the idea of the bears making 
sliding-parties and entertaining their com¬ 
pany with Dr. Kane’s provisions. “ I won¬ 
der what they thought while they were 
pulling the things about?” said Annie. 
“ They must have wondered how they came 
there. I should like to have been behind 
a rock and overheard their conversation, if 
I had understood the bears’ language.” 
“ Even supposing you had understood the 
language, I doubt whether you would have 
stood long to listen to them with the 
thermometer forty degrees below zero,” re- 
