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Show 1868.] MR. R. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. 315 boundless; it roared hideously, tossing the snow in the air, and trotted off in a most indignant state of mind! During the Sealing-season, both in Greenland and in the Spitzbergen seas, the Bear is a constant attendant on the sealer for the sake of the carcasses, in the pursuit of which it is sometimes " more free than welcome." I have often also seen it feeding on Whales of different species, which are found floating dead. In 1861 I saw upwards of twenty all busily devouring the huge inflated carcass of a Baleena mysticetus in Pond's Bay, on the western shores of Davis's Strait. W e were foolish enough to fire a few shots among them, when the Bears sprang furiously from the carcass and made for our boat. One succeeded in getting its paws on to the gunwale; and it was only by tbe vigorous application of an axe that we succeeded in relieving ourselves of so unwelcome an addition to our crew. On the whole, I do not think that the Polar Bear is a very fierce animal, when not enraged; and I cannot help thinking that a great deal of the impressions which we have imbibed regarding its ferocity are more due to old notions of what it ought to be, rather than what it is, and that the tales related by Barentz, Edward Pelham, and other old navigators regarding its bloodthirstiness during the time they wintered in Spitzbergen were a good deal exaggerated. When enraged, or emboldened by hunger, I can, however, quite well understand that, like all wild, and even domesticated animals, it may be dangerous to man. I have chased it over the floes of Pond's Bay; and the Bear's only thought seemed to be how best to escape from its pursuers. I should have hesitated a good deal before making so free with the grizzly bear of the Californian wilds (Ursus ferox), which is, perhaps, the most ferocious animal on the American continent. Though seemingly so unwieldy, the nennok runs with great speed ; and being almost marine in its habits, it swims well. I have chased it with a picked crew of eight whalemen, and yet the Bear has managed to distance us in the race for the ice-fields. It would every now and again, when its two cubs were getting left in tbe rear, stop and (literally) push them up behind; and on reaching the steep edge of the ice-floe, finding that we were fast reaching them, it lifted each of them up on the ice with its teeth, seizing the loose skin at the back of the neck. Once on the ice, they were safe. It is often found swimming at great distances from land (vide the statements in 'Arctic Voyages,' and the works of Richardson, Parry, &c, passim). The stories of its making ice-houses, and of their gambols therein, as related by Fabricius, as well as of its combats with the Walrus, are still prevalent in Greenland. It is curious that the old Eskimo stories about the Polar Bear having no evacuations during the season of hybernation, and being itself the means of preventing them by stopping all the natural passages with moss, grass, or earth (Richardson's 'Fauna Bor.-Am.' i. 34), prevail also among the North-western American Indians on the other side of the continent, in reference to the Brown Bear (Ursus americanus), the substance used in stopping the passages |
