A BEAll KILLED. 
109 
In the course' of the night a bear was seen 
prowling about upon one of the adjoining sheets 
of ice, which, soon afterwards attempting to swim 
across an opening near the ship, was immediately 
pursued by one of our boats, and attacked by the 
harpooner commanding it, who wounded it with 
a lance, and, after it had bravely given battle for 
some time, eventually overcame it. It was a fine 
large specimen, the skin, which was very white, and 
well furred, measuring about eight feet in length. 
when it was seen by myself, on the 29 th of July, when the 
ship was in latitude 74° O', longitude 10° 37' W. Jts bear¬ 
ing being W by N. (true), the part of the coast in sight 
must have been Wollaston Foreland, at the distance of 152 
miles. The apparent distance, however, being scarcely 
one-half of the true distance, I was led into an error re¬ 
specting the longitude of the “ West-Land the reason of 
which I take this opportunity of explaining. The sup¬ 
posed situation of this land was mentioned in a letter to 
the late Sir Joseph Banks ; through whom it was inserted 
in some of the polar charts, in the longitude which I had 
attributed to it. But the distance I calculated from was 
merely conjecture; and from my ignorance at the time of 
the full effects of the unequal refractions of these parallels, 
my conjecture happened to be very wide of the truth. 
Had I not had full proof, in the instance noticed above, of 
the extraordinary extension of vision by refraction, I should 
now have believed, that, however confident I was at the 
time of its being the land that I saw, I must have been 
mistaken. 
