to us was like a cessation from an agony of pain;
and as the hunter had just killed another deer, and the wild fowl flew
around us in abundance, we pitched the tent, and halted for several
hours, and refreshed ourselves with sleep, after the irritation and
almost sleepless nights that we had endured. We were on the march again
at five o'clock; and after we had forded Stoney River, we came upon the
track of a polar bear. The Indian hunter was very keen in his desire to
fall in with it, and I lamented that I had not an opportunity of seeing
him engage the ferocious animal, which seemed to have taken a survey of
the party, and to have gone into the wood a short distance from us. The
bears are now coming off the ice in the Bay, on which they have been
for several months past, to live upon seals, which they catch as they
lie sleeping by the sides of the holes in the drift ice, when it
dissolves or is driven far from shore. They seek their food among the
sea-weed and every trash that is washed up along the coast, or go upon
the rocks, or to the woods, for berries, during the summer months.
Savage, however, as this animal is, it is not so much dreaded by the
Indians as the grizzly bear, which is more ferocious and forward in his
attack. These are found towards the Rocky Mountains, and none but very
expert hunters like to attack them. A gentleman who was travelling to a
distance on the plains to the West of the Red River Colony, told me of
a narrow escape he once had, with his servant boy, in meeting a grizzly
bear. They were riding slowly along, near the close of the day, when
they espied the animal coming from the verge of a wood in the direction
towards them. They immediately quickened the pace of their horses, but
being jaded with the day's journey, the bear was soon seen to gain upon
them. In this emergency, he hit upon an expedient, which was probably
the means of saving their lives. He took the boy, who was screaming
with terror, behind him, and abandoned the horse that he rode. When the
ferocious animal came up to it, the gentleman, who stopped at some
distance, expected to see the bear rend it immediately with his paws;
but to his surprise, after having walked round and smelt at the horse,
as it stood motionless with fear, the bear returned to the wood, and
the horse was afterwards recovered without injury.

The morning of the 14th was very cold, from the wind blowing off the
ice in the Bay; and when we stopped to break