oo distant, and without a boat it
was impossible to carry on any hunting there. Not a single Polar
bear now appeared to be visible in the neighbourhood, although
bears' skulls are found at several places on the beach, and this
animal appears to play a great part in the imagination of the
natives, to judge of the many figures of bears among the bone
carvings I purchased from the Chukches. The natives often have a
small strip of bear's skin on the seat of their sledges, but I have
not seen any whole bear's skin here; perhaps the animal is being
exterminated on the north coast of Siberia. Our wintering,
therefore, will not enrich Arctic literature with any new bear
stories--a very sensible difficulty for the writer himself. Wolves,
on the other hand, occur on the _tundra_ in sufficient abundance,
even if one or other of the wolves found in mist and drifting snow,
and saluted with shot, turned out, on a critical determination of
species, to be our own dogs. At least, this was the case with the
"wolf," that inveigled one of the crew into shooting a ball one dark
night right through the thermometer case, fortunately without
injuring the instruments, and with no other result than that he had
afterwards to bear an endless number of jokes from his comrades on
account of his wolf-hunt. Foxes, white, red and black, also occurred
here in great numbers, but they were at that season difficult to get
at, and besides they had perhaps withdrawn from the coast. Hares, on
the other hand, maintained themselves during the whole winter at
Yinretlen, by day partly out on the ice partly on the cape, by night
in the neighbourhood of the tents. Sweepings and offal from the
proceeds of the chase had there produced a vegetation, which, though
concealed by snow, yielded to the hares in winter a more abundant
supply of food than the barren _tundra_. It was remarkable that the
hares were allowed to live between the tents and in their
neighbourhood without being disturbed by the score of lean and
hungry dogs belonging to the village. When farther into the winter
for the sake of facilitating the hare-hunting I had a hut erected
for Johnsen the hunter, he chose as the place for it the immediate
neighbourhood of the village, declaring that the richest
hunting-ground in the whole neighbourhood was just there. The
shooters stated that part of the hares became snow-blind in spring.
The hares here are larger than with us, and have exceedingly
delicious fles