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seen, but bad luck in not seeing the bears themselves began to be monotonous.
Ravens were occasional visitors, but there is no mention of other birds in
February or March.

March 22nd "Crawford and I would like to make a trip around the
island but the question is dog feed. I am still cooking for them and could also
do that while traveling although it would be a nuisance. We are like Mr.
Micawber, waiting for something to turn up; and we are keeping a good lookout
for bears."

There was a slight turn in the hunting luck when on April 16th
three bears were seen and two of them secured. April 26th they saw a bear with
a cub but made the mistake of trying to get them with dogs instead of by careful
stalking. Two or three fairly good hunting dogs will usually stop a bear on
level ice, but not always. In rough ice the rule is that the bear cannot be
stopped by dogs and the danger is also correspondingly greater to the dogs. In
this case three dogs were sent after the bear. One of them soon came back
wounded, though not seriously; the other two chased the bear several hours and,
although they were able to delay it some, Crawford and Galle never caught up.
They could doubtless have shot the bear but one does not fire at a great distance
when bear and dogs are almost in line and when each dog is worth ten times as
much as the bear.

The method of hunting bears with dogs is inherited from the old
Eskimo period when no other way was feasible, the weapons being bows and arrows.
Even with the most powerful modern rifles some Eskimos still use dogs. This
seems especially true in eastern North America and in Greenland where the arctic
explorers have usually followed the Eskimo custom. It has been the experience
of my expeditions through ten years of living by hunting that any average hunter
can secure bears two or three times as well without dogs as with them.

After a detailed account of the bear hunt, Knight closes the

182

seen, but bad luck in not seeing the bears themselves began to be monotonous.
Ravens were occasional visitors, but there is no mention of other birds in
February or March.

March 22nd "Crawford and I would like to make a trip around the
island but the question is dog feed. I am still cooking for them and could also
do that while traveling although it would be a nuisance. We are like Mr.
Micawber, waiting for something to turn up; and we are keeping a good lookout
for bears."

There was a slight turn in the hunting luck when on April 16th
three bears were seen and two of them secured. April 26th they saw a bear with
a cub but made the mistake of trying to get them with dogs instead of by careful
stalking. Two or three fairly good hunting dogs will usually stop a bear on
level ice, but not always. In rough ice the rule is that the bear cannot be
stopped by dogs and the danger is also correspondingly greater to the dogs. In
this case three dogs were sent after the bear. One of them soon came back
wounded, though not seriously; the other two chased the bear several hours and,
although they were able to delay it some, Crawford and Galle never caught up.
They could doubtless have shot the bear but one does not fire at a great distance
when bear and dogs are almost in line and when each dog is worth ten times as
much as the bear.

The method of hunting bears with dogs is inherited from the old
Eskimo period when no other way was feasible, the weapons being bows and arrows.
Even with the most powerful modern rifles some Eskimos still use dogs. This
seems especially true in eastern North America and in Greenland where the arctic
explorers have usually followed the Eskimo custom. It has been the experience
of my expeditions through ten years of living by hunting that any average hunter
can secure bears two or three times as well without dogs as with them.

After a detailed account of the bear hunt, Knight closes the