Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 139 June to November 1919 . whenall of a sudden half a mile away I sawthe head and shoulders of a bear comeup through the fragile ice. He rested amoment, and myglasses showed mehe was breathingdeeply. After a fewgood breaths he dis-appeared and fortwo or three min-utes there was nosign of him, andthen, a hundredyards or so nearer,the ice was brokenand his head andshoulders again ap-peared. Evidently,seeing the ice wasnot strong enoughfor him to walk on,he was navigatingsubmarine- fashion,swimming a hun-dred yards or sounder the ice andcoming up whennecessar
Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 139 June to November 1919 . whenall of a sudden half a mile away I sawthe head and shoulders of a bear comeup through the fragile ice. He rested amoment, and myglasses showed mehe was breathingdeeply. After a fewgood breaths he dis-appeared and fortwo or three min-utes there was nosign of him, andthen, a hundredyards or so nearer,the ice was brokenand his head andshoulders again ap-peared. Evidently,seeing the ice wasnot strong enoughfor him to walk on,he was navigatingsubmarine- fashion,swimming a hun-dred yards or sounder the ice andcoming up whennecessary tobreathe. I had neverheard, either fromEskimos or frombooks, of this meth-od of locomotion,and knowing thatStorkersen and Olewould be interested,I called them, and together we watched the bear as heapproached our camp. When he cameto the solid ice he scrambled up on itwith perfect unconcern, though he sawus moving about. Evidently he took usand the barking dogs for foxes, and im-mediately on landing he proceeded at aleisurely walk toward us, showing neither. WILKINS IN HUNTING COSTUME hostility nor curiosity, but mere uncon-cern. We killed him when he was in asuitable position for skinning. During the next few days other bearscame in such rapid succession that it wasnot necessary for us to kill any moreseals. It was not that we preferred bearmeat to seal, but rather the are good eating as far as taste isconcerned, but bear meat is stringy, andthe fibers of it get between your teethand make your gums sore, which is nottrue of any other wild meat known tome. For that reason bears are the leastwelcome diet, but in this case we had only a limitedamount of ammu-nition, and as sealsaverage only onehundred and fiftypounds in weight,while bears averageeight hundredpounds, and somerun to double thatweight, it was evi-dently more eco-nomical to use ourcartridges on bears. But inside of aweek we had severaltons of meat andit was evident thatshould the windchange, eventual
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