“and round about the bleak north pole
glideth the lean, white bear.”
nearly forty years ago, when down from the indian country to sell some skins in san francisco, i saw a great commotion around a big ship in the bay, and was told that a polar bear had been discovered floating on an iceberg in the arctic, and had been taken alive by the ship’s crew.
i went out in a boat, and on boarding the ship, just down from alaska with a cargo of ice, i saw the most beautiful specimen of the bear family i ever beheld. a long body and neck, short legs, small head, cream-white and clean as snow, this enormous creature stood before us on the deck, as docile as a lamb. this is as near as ever i came to encountering the polar bear, although i have lived in the arctic and have more than one trophy of the bear family from the land of everlasting snows.
bear are very plenty in alaska and the klondike country, and they are, perhaps, a bit more ferocious than in california, for i have seen more than one man hobbling about the klondike mines on one leg, having lost the other in an argument with bear.
as a rule, the flesh is not good, here, in the salmon season, for the bear is in all lands a famous fisherman. he sits by the river and, while you may think he is asleep, he thrusts his paw deep down, and, quick as wink, he lands a huge salmon in his bunch of long, hooded claws.
a friend and i watched a bear fishing for hours on the yukon, trying to learn his habits. i left my friend, finally, and went to camp to cook supper. then, it seems, my friend shot him, for his skin, i think. thinking the bear dead, he called to me and went up to the bear, knife in hand. but the bear rose up when he felt the knife, caught the man in his arms and they rolled in the river together. the poor man could not get away. when we recovered his body far down the river next day, the bear still held him in her arms. she was a long, slim cinnamon, said to be the most savage fighter in that region.
all the bear of the far north seem to me to have longer bodies and shorter legs than in other lands. the black bear (there are three kinds of them) are bow-legged, i think; at least they “toe in,” walk as an indian walks, and even step one foot over the other when taking their time on the trail. we cultivated the acquaintance of a black bear for some months, on the klondike, in the winter of ’97-’98, and had a good chance to learn his habits. he was a persistent robber and very cunning. he would eat anything he could get, which was not much, of course, and when he could not get anything thrown to him from a door he would go and tear down a stump and eat ants. i don’t know why he did not hibernate, as other bears in that region do. he may have been a sort of crank. no one who knew about him, or who had been in camp long, would hurt him; but a crowd of strangers, passing up the trail near our klondike cabin, saw him, and as he did not try to get away he was soon dead. he weighed 400 pounds, and they sold him where he lay for one dollar a pound.
i fell in with a famous bear-hunter, a few miles up from the mouth of the klondike early in september, before the snow fell, and with him made a short hunt. he has wonderful bear sense. he has but one eye and but one side of a face, the rest of him having been knocked off by the slash of a bear’s paw. he is known as bear bill.
the moss is very deep and thick and elastic in that region, so that no tracks are made except in a worn trail. but bill saw where a bit of moss had been disturbed away up on a mountain side, and he sat right down and turned his one eye and all his bear sense to the solution of the mystery.
at last he decided that a bear had been gathering moss for a bed. then he went close up under a cliff of rocks and in a few minutes was peering and pointing down into a sunken place in the earth. and behold, we could see the moss move! a bear had covered himself up and was waiting to be snowed under. bill walked all around the spot, then took position on a higher place and shouted to the bear to come out. the bear did not move. then he got me to throw some rocks. no response. then bill fired his winchester down into the moss. in a second the big brown fellow was on his hind feet looking us full in the face and blinking his little black eyes as if trying to make us out. bill dropped him at once, with a bullet in his brain.
i greatly regret that i never had the good fortune to encounter a polar bear, so that i might be able to tell you more about him and his habits; for men of science and writers of books are not bear-hunters, as a rule, and so real information about this white robber-monk of the cold, blue north is meager indeed. but here is what the most eminent english authority says about the nature and habits of this one bear that i have not shaken hands with, or encountered in some sort of way on his native heath:
“the great white bear of the arctic regions—the ‘nennok’ of the eskimo—is the largest as well as one of the best known of the whole family. it is a gigantic animal, often attaining a length of nearly nine feet and is proportionally strong and fierce. it is found over the whole of greenland; but its numbers seem to be on the decrease. it is distinguished from other bears by its narrow head, its flat forehead in a line with its prolonged muzzle, its short ears and long neck. it is of a light, creamy color, rarely pure white, except when young, hence the scottish whalers call it the ‘brounie’ and sometimes the ‘farmer,’ from its very agricultural appearance as it stalks leisurely over the furrowed fields of ice. its principal food consists of seals, which it persecutes most indefatigably; but it is somewhat omniverous in its diet, and will often clear an islet of eider duck eggs in the course of a few hours. i once saw it watch a seal for half a day, the seal continually escaping, just as the bear was about putting his foot on it, at the atluk (or escape hole) in the ice. finally, it tried to circumvent its prey in another maneuver. it swam off to a distance, and when the seal was again half asleep at its atluk, the bear swam under the ice, with a view to cut off its retreat. it failed, however, and the seal finally escaped. the rage of the animal was boundless; it moaned hideously, tossing the snow in the air, and at last trotted off in a most indignant state of mind.
“being so fond of seal-flesh, the polar bear often proves a great nuisance to sealhunters, whose occupation he naturally regards as a catering to his wants. he is also glad of the whale carcasses often found floating in the arctic seas, and travelers have seen as many as twenty bears busily discussing the huge body of a dead whalebone whale.
“as the polar bear is able to obtain food all through the arctic winter, there is not the same necessity, as in the case of the vegetable-eating bears, for hibernating. in fact, the males and young females roam about through the whole winter, and only the older females retire for the season. these—according to the eskimo account, quoted by captain lyon—are very fat at the commencement of winter, and on the first fall of snow lie down and allow themselves to be covered, or else dig a cave in a drift, and then go to sleep until the spring, when the cubs are born. by this time the animal’s heat has melted the snow for a considerable distance, so that there is plenty of room for the young ones, who tumble about at their ease and get fat at the expense of their parent, who, after her long abstinence, becomes gradually very thin and weak. the whole family leave their abode of snow when the sun is strong enough to partially melt its roof.
“the polar bear is regularly hunted with dogs by the eskimo. the following extract gives an account of their mode of procedure:
“let us suppose a bear scented out at the base of an iceberg. the eskimo examines the track with sagacious care, to determine its age and direction, and the speed with which the animal was moving when he passed along. the dogs are set upon the trail, and the hunter courses over the ice in silence. as he turns the angle of the berg his game is in view before him, stalking along, probably, with quiet march, sometimes snuffing the air suspiciously, but making, nevertheless, for a nest of broken hummocks. the dogs spring forward, opening a wild, wolfish yell, the driver shrieking ‘nannook! nannook!’ and all straining every nerve in pursuit.
“the bear rises on his haunches, then starts off at full speed. the hunter, as he runs, leaning over his sledge, seizes the traces of a couple of his dogs and liberates them from their burthen. it is the work of a minute, for the motion is not checked, and the remaining dogs rush on with apparent ease.
“now, pressed more severely, the bear makes for an iceberg, and stands at bay, while his two foremost pursuers halt at a short distance and await the arrival of the hunter. at this moment the whole pack are liberated; the hunter grasps his lance, and, tumbling through the snow and ice, prepares for the encounter.
“if there be two hunters, the bear is killed easily; for one makes a feint of thrusting the spear at the right side, and, as the animal turns with his arms toward the threatened attack, the left is unprotected and receives the death wound.”
