m
starvation, freezing, or drowning. For weeks past dead bodies have been
cast upon the rugged coast by the sea, but the fate of many of the lost
will never be known.

Mr. Ninoo, who hunts the seal so successfully, is hunted in turn for the
sake of his thick soft fur, and often falls a victim both to white men
and Esquimaux. The latter sometimes kill him by rolling a thick piece of
whalebone, about two feet long and four inches wide, into a small coil,
and wrapping it in a piece of seal blubber so that it forms a ball.
Placed outside the hut, it soon freezes hard. Provided with this frozen
bait, the natives search for Ninoo. When they find him, they run away,
and he chases them; but they drop the ball of blubber, and he, meeting
with it, greedily swallows it whole. In a few minutes the heat of his
body thaws the blubber and releases the whalebone. It uncoils with
terrible force, and so tears his stomach that the great bear falls down
in helpless agony, to which an end is quickly put by the hunter, who now
hurries to the spot.

[Begun in Harper's YOUNG PEOPLE No. 24, April 13.]

THE STORY OF GEORGE WASHINGTON.

BY EDWARD CARY.

CHAPTER V.

So now the war was as good as finished. There was no more fighting. The
British government was nearly ready to give up to the United States, and
own that they "were, and of right ought to be, free and independent," as
the great Declaration had said more than five years before. But such
things take a long time to settle, and General Washington thought that
the Americans could make a great deal better terms of peace if they kept
ready for war. How tired he was of the war! How he longed to get back to
Mount Vernon, and to his peaceful farmer's life! His letters written
about this time are full of these desires. He was a great General; and
the whole country honored and loved him as a man whose courage and skill
had made his countrymen free, but he often said that he would give all
the glory he had won if he could go back to his crops and his trees, his
horses and his hounds, and his beloved family, and rest. Yet he stood by
his post to the very last. He begged his countrymen to keep up the army,
and not to lay down their arms till everything was sure. He begged his
officers and soldiers to be patient and stay with him, though they had
much reason to complain. They had been poorly paid, or not paid at all.
Many of them were actually ruined for their country, and, when they le