Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/292

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THE BEAR HUNT.
273

of my past and prospective visitation. I found that nothing whatever would induce them to stop and make encampment there. They said that the old bear would return in the night, and, smelling the blood of her young, she would be enraged to madness, and kill all of us. Furthermore, they said that


YOUNG POLAR COMING TO THE POINT.


their people always avoided killing the young of a Ninoo till the old one was dead, from the very fact that the previous death of the offspring made the mother a hundredfold more terrible than she otherwise would be. The result of this matter was no camp there or about there that night.

My companions, having completed their work of skinning