The gallant American who generously risked his life in the hope of assisting Franklin and his companions, thus informs us of the method of killing them :

· Our whole journey had been an almost unbroken and scarcely varied series of bear-hunts. They had lost for me the attractions of novelty; but, like the contests with the walrus, they were always interesting, because characteristic of this rude people.

"The dogs are carefully trained not to engage in contest with the bear, but to retard its flight. While one engrosses his attention ahead, a second attacks him in the rear; and, always alert, and each protecting the other, it rarely happens that they are seriously injured, or that they fail to delay the animal until the hunter come up.

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Let us suppose a bear scented out at the base of an iceberg. The Esquimaux 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 at their side in silence. As he turns the angle of the berg his game is in view before him, stalking probably along with quiet march, sometimes snuffing the air suspiciously, but making, nevertheless, for a nest of broken hummocks. The dogs spring forward, opening in a wild wolfish yell, the driver shrieking Nannook! nannook!' and all straining every nerve in pursuit.

"The bear rises on his haunches, inspects his pursuers, and 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 quietly 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 a spear at the right side, and, as the animal turns with his arms towards the threatened attack, the left is unprotected and receives the death-wound.

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'But if there be only one hunter, he does not hesitate. Grasping the lance firmly in his hands, he provokes the animal to pursue him by moving rapidly across its path, and then running as if to escape. But hardly is its long, unwieldy body extended for the solicited chase, before, with a rapid jump, the hunter doubles on his track and runs back toward his first position. The bear is in the act of turning after him again, when the lance is plunged into the left side, below the shoulder. So dexterously has this thrust to be made, that an unpractised hunter has often to leave his spear in the side of his prey and run for his life. But even then, if well aided by the dogs, a cool, skilful man seldom fails to kill his adversary.

"The tracks of bears were becoming more and more numerous as we rounded one iceberg after another; and we could see the beds they had worn in the snow while watching for seal. These swayed the dogs from their course, and they suddenly encountered a large male bear in the act of devour

ing a seal. The impulse was irresistible: I lost all control over both dogs and drivers. They seemed dead to everything except the passion of pursuit. Off they sped with incredible swiftness, the Esquimaux clinging to their sledges, and cheering their dogs with loud cries of Nannook!' A mad, wild chase, wilder than German legend-the dogs wolves, the drivers devils. After a furious run the animal was brought to bay, the lance and rifle did their work, and we halted for a general feed. The dogs gorged themselves, the drivers did as much, and we buried the remainder of the carcass in the snow."

In recounting another bear-hunt, Kane remarks—“ This time she would really have escaped but for the admirable tactics of our new recruits from the Esquimaux. The dogs of Smith's Sound are educated more thoroughly than any of their more southern brethren. Unlike the dogs we had brought with us from Baflin's Bay, these were trained, not to attack, but to embarrass. They ran in circles round the bear, and when pursued would keep ahead with regulated gait, their comrades effecting a diversion at the critical moment by a nip at her hinder-quarters. This was done so systematically and with so little seeming excitement as to strike every one on board. I have seen bear-dogs elsewhere that had been drilled to relieve each other in the mêlée and avoid the direct assault; but here, two dogs, without even a demonstration of attack, would put themselves before the path of the animal, and, retreating right and left, lead him into a profitless pursuit that checked his advance completely." "This beast weighed when killed, though but of medium size

and very lean, 650 lbs."

The, Esquimaux describe the Pleiades, as a pack of dogs in pursuit of a bear.

The chase of the walrus in the darker, colder, and more tempestuous season of the year, is fearfully hazardous, and catastrophes often occur. Sometimes he rises by the side of an iceberg, where the currents have worn away the floe, or through a tide-crack, and, enjoying the sunshine too long, finds his retreat cut off by the freezing up of the opening. When thus caught, the Esquimaux scent him out by their dogs, and spear him.

In relation to the outward resemblance between these dogs and wolves, Kane remarks, that a wolf being reported at the meat-house he went out in haste to shoot it.

"I got a somewhat rapid shot. I hit one of our dogs, a truant from Morton's team; luckily a flesh-wound only, for he is too good a beast to lose. I could have sworn he was a wolf."

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"There is so much of identical character between our Arctic dogs and wolves, that I am inclined to agree with Mr. Broderip, who, in the Zoological Recreations,' assigns to them a family origin. The oblique position of a wolf's eye is not uncommon among the dogs of my team. I have a slut, one of the tamest and most affectionate of the whole of them, who has the long legs and compact body, and drooping tail, and wild, scared expression of the eye, which some naturalists have supposed to characterise the wolf alone. When domesticated early-and it is easy to domesticate him—the wolf follows and loves you like a dog. That they are fond of a loose foot proves nothing: many of our pack will run away for weeks into the wilderness of ice; yet they cannot be per

suaded when they come back to inhabit the kennel we have built for them only a hundred yards off. They crouch around for the companionship of man. Both animals howl in unison alike: the bell at the settlements of South Greenland always starts them. Their footprint is the same, at least in Smith's Sound. Dr. Richardson's remark to the contrary made me observe the fact that our northern dogs leave the same 'spread track' of the toes when running, though not perhaps as well marked as the wolf's.

The old proverb, and the circumstance of the wolf having sometimes carried off an Esquimaux dog, has been alluded to by the editors of the Diffusion of Knowledge Library.' But this, too, is inconclusive, for the proverb is false. It is not quite a month ago since I found five of our dogs gluttonizing on the carcasses of their dead companions who had been thrown out on a rubbish-heap, and I have seen pups only two months old risk an indigestion by over-feeding on their twin brethren who had preceded them in a like imprudence.

"Nor is there anything in the supposed difference of strength. The Esquimaux dog of Smith's Sound encounters the wolf fearlessly and with success. The wolves of Northern America never venture near the huts; but it is well known that when they have been chasing the deer or the moose, the dogs have come up as rivals in the hunt, beaten them off, and appropriated the prey to themselves."

"Dec.-I have ahead of me a journey of a hundred miles, to say nothing of the return. My misgivings are mostly on account of the dogs. We have been feeding them on